On Monday, the People's Daily published a report showing that 800,000 to 1.2 million babies are born with defects on an annual basis, in China.

Experts studied the statistics released by the Ministry of Health and said that 10% of the families in China have a baby with defects. The experts also stated that the defect births take place in China every 30 seconds, which is the highest percentage among the world’s population. 20% of the world’s defect births are attributed to China’s.

Jiang Fan, the Deputy Director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, stated that the costs of treating the babies with birth defects have reached tens of billions of Yuan, per year.

Zheng Xiaoying, the Head of the Institute of Population Research at Peking University, commented on the results, adding that the birth defects in China vary between neural tube defects, congenital heart disease and cleft lips.

Zheng added, "China is a country with a very high rate of neural tube defect occurrences. Every year 80,000 to 100,000 babies are born with defects that lead to cleft lip and other problems. This is because the bodies of their mothers lacked folic acid during pregnancy".