The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy hospital ship "Peace Ark", which is on the Mission Harmony-2024, arrived at the port of Douala in Cameroon on Monday to conduct a seven-day visit and provide medical service to local residents.
It marked the hospital ship's first visit to the central African country.
The Cameroonian government held a grand welcome ceremony at the dock of the hospital ship, with the attendance of Cameroonian military and political officials, local residents, staff of the Chinese embassy in Cameroon, representatives of overseas Chinese and Chinese-funded institutions in Cameroon.
The hospital ship will offer diagnosis and treatment services on its main platform while dispatching expert and medical teams to local hospitals, military bases, communities, and government institutions to conduct activities such as joint medical treatment, academic exchanges and emergency skills training.
The hospital ship conducted a joint training with two patrol ships from Cameroon's navy in the waters off the port of Douala on Sunday.
The training testified each other's command, communication and coordination capabilities and laid solid foundation for strengthening military cooperation and exchanges between the two sides.
The "Peace Ark" set sail from a military port in Zhoushan in east China's Zhejiang Province in mid-June for Mission Harmony-2024.
During the mission, the ship will visit 13 countries and make port calls to France and Greece.
This is the 10th Mission Harmony for "Peace Ark" since its commissioning in 2008.
There are over 100 personnel on board the maritime hospital, featuring 17 clinical departments and 5 auxiliary diagnostic departments.
The "Peace Ark" is the first domestically designed and constructed standard ocean-going hospital ship in China.
China’s hospital ship “Peace Ark” pays maiden visit to Cameroon
In expanding domestic demand through consumption growth, China will integrate efforts in boosting consumption with those in delivering benefits to the people, and further promote increase of the earnings of middle- and low-income groups, said Zheng Shanjie, director of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
Further expanding domestic demand is one of the measures for systematically implementing a package of incremental policies to solidly promote economic growth, structural optimization and sustained momentum of development, according to Zheng.
"We will intensify support for specific groups. Before the National Day holiday, we have issued one-time living allowances to people in difficulty including those facing special difficulties and orphans. We will lift the level of financial aid for students and expand coverage of relevant policies. We will raise the cap of government-subsidized student loans for junior college and university students, and those pursuing master's or doctor's degrees, and promote the lowering of interest rates of such loans," said the official.
Zheng said China will promote continued expansion of consumption on bulk commodities through large-scale upgrading of equipment and the replacement of old consumer goods with new ones.
"We will expand consumption on services including elderly care and childcare, which are paid widespread attention across the society. We will support and regulate social forces in developing elderly care and childcare industries, enhance improvement of the policy system to boost birth rates, upgrade basic public services for childbirth and pediatric medical care. And we will foster new forms of consumption such as digital consumption and green consumption, and make the supply side better adapt to medium- and high-end demands," said Zheng.
China to further expand domestic demand
