Chinese culture of truly respecting people's health and life, a system to ensure the solidarity of the whole society, and ever-growing national strength were key to China's effective containment of the COVID-19 epidemic, a leading medical expert said Thursday.

Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, made the remarks in his capacity as a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body, on the sidelines of its annual session which started on Thursday.

Chinese culture truly values people's health and life and such values have been reflected in the public's unified commitment to life-saving actions, decisiveness in policy making, and professionalism of medical workers who are always ready to serve the people, Wang said.

China has a system to ensure that when facing major difficulties and challenges, its people can unite as one to overcome difficulties. Under such a system, the country can pool resources and mobilize various forces to deal with severe challenges, he said.

Remarkably improved national strength over the past 70 years also played a significant role in curbing the epidemic, he added.

Wang, also a renowned respiratory specialist and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, had joined other leading experts to guide the anti-virus work in the hard-hit city of Wuhan since February.

"As frontline workers, we could really feel the strength of our culture, our system and our nation that helped lay a solid foundation for winning the fight against the epidemic," he said.

He made suggestions related to improving the country's public health system from now on.

China should enhance medical education and establish a sound mechanism to attract talent to study medicine and foster more health care practitioners, Wang said.

He proposed to build a higher-level national institute of medical science, which can lead and coordinate overall medical research and innovation for the development of health and life science. It is also vital to establish a national fund dedicated to medical and health science research, he said.

"Another important point is to enhance the combination of medical treatment and prevention. Only through the integration of the two aspects can we better cope with major challenges," he said.