The Shanxi Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention -- based in Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi province -- and the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Shanghai in eastern China, signed a strategic cooperation agreement on July 17, to jointly build a domestic first-class public health care system.

Officials said the public health system and other facilities will be built in Shanxi province. Apart from the public health system, the two regions will cooperate in other areas.

They will also work together in infectious disease epidemic prevention and control, building key laboratories, scientific research, professional personnel exchanges and training, chronic disease prevention and control, public health promotions, as well as big data applications.

Officials said the Shanxi center will hire experts from the Shanghai center to offer targeted assistance in the construction of the key laboratory for the diagnosis and prevention of major infectious diseases, the construction of the P3-level biosafety laboratory in the province and its own development.