China's family planning authority will send a medical team to conduct surgery to reverse sterilization operations on parents in China's earthquake zone who want to bear another child.

Zhang Shikun, director of the science and technology bureau of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said, "The team, comprising experts on childbearing, will conduct surgery in the quake-hit areas to provide technological support for those wanting to give birth to another."

The team was part of the commission's plan to provide free reproduction services, including counseling, guidance, surgery, and the implementation of artificial reproduction technology, for those who wish to have another child, she said.

Under China's "one child" policies, parents who lose a child or have a disabled child are allowed to have a second baby.

According to documents issued by the earthquake relief headquarters of the State Council and the commission last month, families whose children were killed or disabled in the May 12 earthquake will be allowed to have another child.

China's "one-child" policy, which has been in effect for more than three decades as a policy and then a law, has prevented an estimated 400 million births. It limits most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two. The Sichuan Provincial Population and Family Planning Commission estimated about 7,000 dead and 16,000 injured were the only children.

(Xinhua News Agency June 7, 2008)