Pharmaceutical company Merck recently won approval from the China Food and Drug Administration to sell its human papillomavirus vaccine, Gardasil, to help women fight cervical cancer.

Developed by the US-based company in 2006, the vaccine has proved effective in protecting against the virus, better known as HPV, the chief cause of cervical cancer. The virus is found in almost all cervical cancer cases.

Gardasil is the first HPV vaccine in the world and the second to be licensed for use in China.

In July, Cervarix, an HPV vaccine developed by pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline, received approval to be sold on the Chinese mainland after almost 10 years of seeking approval.

Gardasil is expected to be commercially available on the mainland in three to six months, which means women will no longer have to seek vaccinations outside of the mainland, such as Hong Kong.

After breast cancer, cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women ages 15 to 44 in China. Statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention show China reports more than 130,000 cervical cancer cases a year, accounting for 28 percent of global total.

The HPV vaccine, as the first anti-cancer vaccine in the world, has proved effective in preventing cervical cancer and is seen as a breakthrough in the fight against cancer.

Gardasil offers protection against nine strains of HPV, including the two main cancer-causing varieties: type 16 and type 18. Cervarix offers protection only against types 16 and 18, which account for about 70 percent of all cervical cancer cases.

Today, such vaccines are used in about 120 countries and regions, including the United States, Australia and most European countries.

As HPV is sexually transmitted, the World Health Organization recommends routine vaccination of girls age 9 to 13 because they are not as likely to have begun sexual activity.

Qiao Youlin, a professor of epidemiology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences’ Cancer Hospital in Beijing, said the main target group of Cervarix is females age 9 to 26, although it is theoretically effective for women of all ages.

Clinical trials discovered the vaccine is effective for women as old as 45, he said.

According to the Securities Times newspaper, Zhifei Biological Products Co in Chongqing will promote, supply and sell the vaccine in China for the next three years.

As the exclusive distributor of the vaccine, the company plans to purchase 1.14 billion yuan ($166 million) worth of Gardasil vaccines in the first year, 1.48 billion yuan in the second year and 1.85 billion yuan in the third year, the newspaper said.

A pilot area for the internationalization of education on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was officially launched on Sunday in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province.

With the aim of training TCM talent and better promoting TCM globally, the pilot area was jointly planned by the Ministry of Education, Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and pharmaceutical firm Jiangzhong Group.

A set of programs will be carried out, including the training of internationally oriented TCM professionals, as well as programs on international communication and cooperation in TCM education.

Under the programs, more foreign students and doctors will have a chance to receive TCM training in China, and TCM documents will be translated into more foreign languages. More Chinese talent with a command of TCM knowledge and foreign languages will be cultivated.

Wang Guoqiang, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission and head of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the training of talent is a priority in promoting TCM abroad, which is an integral part of people-to-people exchanges under the Belt and Road Initiative.

A new H7N9 virus infection was confirmed in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, local authorities said on Sunday.

The 44-year-old patient, surnamed Wang, is a seller of live poultry in a market in the city of Zigong, according to the government of the Ziliujing District of the city on Saturday.

The patient is being treated in a local hospital and is in stable condition.

All the live poultry markets in the city will be suspended for one month from May 22.

H7N9 is a bird flu strain first reported to have infected humans in China in March 2013. Infections are most likely to occur in winter and spring.

Disease control and prevention experts have said that the H7N9 virus is not transmitted from person to person.

Experts recommend avoiding contact with birds, and only buying certified poultry.

Experts in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have developed a Mongolian language database containing over 19 million words and phrases in an effort to protect ethnic culture and language.

The program, based on cloud computing technology, was initiated in 2012 by Mengdong cloud computing center of Chifeng City and Inner Mongolia University.

Yan Xiaofeng, an engineer with the program, said the university started to collect Mongolian language documents in the 1980s, which has helped contribute to the database. The database covers a wide range of content including lexicons, grammar and literature.

Nashunuzhitu, a professor at the university, said the database’s Mongolian-Mandarin electronic dictionary is open to the public. The database also includes a dictionary for scientific terminology featuring Mandarin, Mongolian, English and Japanese.

In 2016, the region designated the big data and cloud computing industries as new engines for local development, vowing that the regional big data industry’s output value will exceed 100 billion yuan (14.5 billion U. S. dollars) in 2020.

Two men who allegedly hunted a wild rhesus monkey have been detained, police in north China’s Shanxi Province said Sunday.

Police with the public security bureau of Yuncheng City were informed earlier this month that a car carrying a caged monkey was seized on an expressway in Yuanqu County.

Investigation showed that the two suspects, from Henan Province, drove to Shanxi Lishan national nature reserve. They hit a rhesus monkey with a tranquilizer dart and locked it in an iron cage.

They were intercepted by highway security staff on their way back to Henan.

Rhesus monkeys are a second-class nationally protected animal. The Lishan reserve has hundreds of rhesus monkeys living there.

The two men were detained for illegal hunting and transporting a precious and endangered wild animal.