China has closed 12,000 unlicensed clinics and medical institutions providing treatment for sexually transmitted diseases in the past three years, said the Ministry of Health on Tuesday.

The ministry also closed 5,483 institutions offering gender identification and abortion operations since a campaign to crack down on illegal clinics and medical institutions was launched in 2005, Vice Minister of Health Ma Xiaowei said during a teleconference.

The ministry has revoked the licenses of 251,000 medical institutions, and penalized 78,000 medical institutions that hired unqualified personnel, and 5,939 medical institutions that rented offices to unlicensed medical institutions and personnel, he said.

The ministry also confiscated 94.66 million yuan in illegal earnings, Ma said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2008)