CHANGCHUN - More efforts are needed to reduce food and drug safety emergencies and incidents need to be managed better, a leading official from China's food and drug watchdog has urged.

Sun Xianze, a senior official of the China Food and Drug Administration, made the comments on Sunday at a national symposium on food and drug safety emergencies in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province.

Noting that food and drug safety incidents occur frequently and the country's ability in dealing with such emergencies is still very weak, the official said that China will build and improve emergency management systems and mechanisms.

A case of suspected food poisoning in north China's Hebei Province led to 96 middle school students being hospitalized on Friday. Also, more than 60 students from a primary school in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region suffered from food poisoning on September 4.

"China faces an increasingly complicated situation and arduous task in the field of emergency management," Sun said, adding that capabilities in monitoring and warning, rapid response and coordination work also needs to be improved.

Sun also called for better training to ensure emergencies can be dealt with in a timely manner.

An emergency exercise was carried out during the symposium in the province.