The Ministry of Health has pledged to widen medical reforms to
allow most Chinese, especially those living in rural areas, to
benefit from proper medical services.
The government will give priority to increasing investment to
build up the public health infrastructure, especially in the
countryside, Vice Minister of Health Zhu Qingsheng said in Shanghai
on February 28.
Zhu said the ministry is busy establishing both early-warning
and emergency-preparedness systems across the nation to better cope
with epidemics such as SARS (severe acute respiratory
syndrome).
Construction of a multimillion-US-dollar nationwide disease
prevention and control system has begun. The first phase includes a
national disease prevention and control center for which 634
million yuan (US$76 million) was allocated. The total investment
for local disease prevention projects has reached 6.8 billion yuan
(US$819 million), Zhu said.
More than 3 billion yuan (US$361 million) was earmarked last
year to build an urban emergency aid system connecting large and
medium-sized hospitals, he noted. County-level hospitals and those
above that level have been urged to establish infectious disease
departments and protective zones to better control epidemics.
Zhu said planners will concentrate on four major areas of reform
in the medical system in the next few years.
The first is completing a government-led basic medical service
and public health security system.
Second will be encouraging the expansion of nongovernmental
medical investment and developing private, foreign-funded and
shareholding, for-profit hospitals.
Improving community health service institutes to build up a
two-tier medical system is third on the list.
Finally, enhancing management and supervision of the health
industry.
Medical experts acknowledge that the relatively expensive but
low-quality medical services and fragmentary medical service
coverage in rural areas has bottlenecked the development of the
country's health industry.
The new medical reform measures will give rural residents better
access to medical assistance by joining the new, cooperative
medicare system.
The cooperatives, which are similar to medical insurance
institutions and are being utilized in four pilot provinces,
require contributions both from individual farmers and the
government so that a funding pool is built up to cover treatment
costs at set amounts for serious illnesses.
Vice Premier Wu Yi has
urged local governments to enhance pilot medicare measures for
farmers and their families.
Some 108.9 million city residents across China were already
covered by a basic medical insurance network by the end of last
year.
But the health network is incomplete and is especially fragile
in China's rural areas, with most of rural populations still
uncovered by any medicare system, Wu said.
A recent survey by the Beijing-based Horizon Research Institute
shows that only 12 percent of farmers are covered by medical
insurance, including government and commercial insurance, while the
number in cities is 54 percent.
The central government is determined to set up an effective
welfare system to offer medicare to 780 million farmers. The system
is scheduled to be expanded to cover all farmers by 2010.
So far, more than 43 million farmers have enjoyed trial medicare
insurance.
(China Daily March 1, 2004)