A new health standard has included Hepatitis B carriers into eligible candidates of civil servants while canceling old requirements on candidates' weight and height.

The trial version of health standards for civil servants issued by the ministries of Personnel and Health took effect Wednesday.

The 21-item standards said Hepatitis B virus carriers are eligible to work for the government if they are confirmed not to be Hepatitis patients.

This is the first national health standard for civil servants in China. Local governments had issued their own health standards for civil servants since the country started selecting officials by a national exam in 1994.

Hepatitis B carriers were usually turned down after health checkups though they had passed the national exam for civil servants.

The administration tried to protect the legal rights of Hepatitis B carriers by adopting this item, said Wei Lai, director of the Institute of Hepatology of Beijing University, who took part in drafting the standards.

People will have little chance to be infected by the Hepatitis B virus from a carrier colleague while working as civil servants, Wei said.

Hepatitis B virus will not spread except by blood, infected medical facilities and between mother and child.

"The new standards give us the first light in the morning but we are not sure whether it will be a sunny day," said Zhang Xianzhu, a 26-year-old man who passed the civil servant exam with outstanding performance but was turned down because of being a Hepatitis B carrier in 2003, quoted by Friday's Beijing News.

He worried that the government departments will take other excuses to refuse carrier candidates despite the new standards.

It was a headway for the government to show its attitude against bias on Hepatitis B carriers but more improvement will be made only when the public changes their attitude, he said.

The health standards neither ban the disabled from working for the government nor include requirements on candidates' weight and height, which were common in many local standards.

It also said the government departments need to discuss with local health authorities if they need to impose special requirements on their candidates for certain posts.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2005)