Tibet has invested more than eight million yuan in launching a pilot intervention program to reduce the birth defects in 2013.

It is an educational-intervention program for women before pregnancy or during the early stage of pregnancy, which belongs to "primary prevention" according to the stipulation of the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO has put forward three different levels of prevention strategies for birth defects in order to reduce the occurrence.

The "primary prevention" is to reduce the occurrence of birth defects with health education, best childbearing age choosing, pregnancy health care, avoiding exposure to harmful substances and so on.

The "secondary prevention" is to identify serious fetal birth defects by the pregnancy screening check and prenatal diagnosis, while the “third prevention" is to screening check diseases of newborn babies.