Gu Jin, president of Peking University Shougang Hospital, called for more extensive health insurance to cover cancer screenings in his address on Monday at a panel discussion of Beijing delegation during the ongoing first session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) held in Beijing.

The country's current health insurance coverage mainly focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of cancers and other diseases while paying inadequate attention to their prevention and detection, said Gu, a deputy to the NPC, China's top legislature.

Cancer is among the most serious threats to Chinese people's health, Gu said, citing statistics released by the Chinese National Cancer Center in 2017 that about 4.29 million people are diagnosed with the disease and more than 2.81 million die from it each year in the country.

"China has made encouraging achievements in cancer treatment, as evidenced by the clinical application of several medicines which the country developed independently, but there's still much that can be done to fight the disease," he said.

According to Gu, for most of the cancer patients under treatment in China, their diseases are already in middle or late stages. He believed if cancer screenings covered by the health insurance, more people would receive the service, and the disease could be treated as early as possible.

He also suggested the provision of hospice care for patients with late-stage cancers and other terminal illnesses be added to the standards for evaluating China's hospitals.

Based on his experience managing a hospital's hospice care center, Gu found that there is an enormous demand for hospice care in China, but that many tertiary hospitals feel reluctant to set up related facilities due to the low profitability of providing the service.

"Rather than only receiving the patients that bring in profits, hospitals should also take the responsibility to deliver care to the terminally ill," he said.

Peking University Shougang Hospital, a tertiary hospital in Beijing, officially opened its hospice center last June, which is the first of its kind in a tertiary comprehensive hospital in China.

In this year's government work report delivered at the opening meeting of the first session of the 13th NPC, Premier Li Keqiang said that the country vows to strengthen its efforts to prevent and cure cancer and other serious diseases through more advanced science and technology.