China will introduce an ambitious plan this year to make medical
services more affordable in rural areas by restructuring its rural
medical cooperative system.
The system, similar to medical insurance, requires contributions
both from individual farmers and governments so that a funding pool
is built up to cover farmers' treatment costs for serious illnesses
at a set ratio.
The State Council gave its approval to the plan last October.
Each province would have to choose at least two or three counties
to run pilot schemes this year, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said
on Wednesday.
Public health authorities in China now consider the plan, due to be
effective nationwide by 2010, as a starting point for a demanding
scheme to provide basic and fair health care to the rural
residents, who make up more than 70 percent of the country's nearly
1.3 billion population.
Chinese farmers were more likely to suffer a financial crisis
caused by illness than urban dwellers because the farmers paid
almost all their medical bills themselves, said Chen Xiwen, deputy
director of the State Council's center for development
research.
He
said while urbanites paid 60 percent of medical expenses, farmers
paid 90 percent, and the average farmer income was only one-third
of their urban counterparts.
An
old cooperative medical system that operated under the planned
economy had greatly improved the health of Chinese farmers in past
decades. But it became ineffective when the market economy swept
the countryside.
Zhang said the central government would make an annual contribution
of 10 yuan (US$1.20) to each participant in the cooperatives in the
central and western regions. Local governments are expected to
contribute equally to the funding pool.
(Xinhua News Agency January 25, 2003)