Youngsters take a sleigh ride at
Shichahai Lake in
Beijing. Such outdoor activities can help keep one fit in winter.
Huang Xiaobing
Zhao Zhixin says he was very busy all of last year, advising
people how to keep healthy. His efforts have borne fruit, though,
he says, because more and more people now practice what he
preaches.
"At times, I get a call from a person just seeking a remedy for
waist pain," says the Beijing-based health and exercise specialist
who gets dozens of phone calls a day from people seeking health
tips. "Follow my instruction, please. Lower your body and keep
straight, squat down and go up." His advice could be as simple as
that.
The remedy at times could be no more than just a set of body
stretching exercises, he says. People that he helps and the media
like to call him a "grassroots health promotion star". That's no
surprise because he has been in the business for a decade.
People brave the icy winter in Qinhuangdao, Hebei, for a swim. Most
of us, however, need not go to that extreme to keep fit. Liu
Xuezhong
His commitment to public health began three decades ago, after
he majored in physical education from Beijing Sport University and
started teaching there. He shifted to another post later, to take
up the general public's health as a fulltime profession. Official
recognition came in 2000, when the General Administration of Sport
appointed him State-level Social Health Instructor.
His importance and popularity peaked in 2006 as he began
disseminating health knowledge on a TV program hosted by Beijing
Television Station. The daily show with information capsules on
health and disease prevention was the first health-themed program
to be aired in the country. No wonder, it has got very high ratings
and a large number of viewers.
The program coincided with people's rising demand to know about
health and fitness, he says, making him feel the public needs more
people like him today. In fact, public demand can be gauged from
Beijing OpenBook's bestselling list, which gives information on the
Chinese book market. The top three bestsellers in the non-fiction
category last year were health and fitness books, OpenBook market
analyst Zhu Jianhua says. Their sales jumped 32 percent.
A readership survey, conducted by China News Week and Sina.com
recently, showed 82 percent of the 1,436 respondents had read a
book on health or fitness, or would like to read one. A remarkable
73.3 percent said they were very familiar with such books, and
already owned several of them. And more than half of the people
supported publication of such books, with over 30 percent saying
they had followed the books' guidelines and benefited from them.
"I've bought such books after seeing people around me do so,"
writes an online writer, who goes by the name of Xiao Mao and
claims to be an IT worker in Beijing. "Sometimes they give useful
tips to improve my health and point out the bad habits that can
harm a person and lead to diseases. (The tips help because) I'm too
busy to get enough exercise."
Why have books on how to stay healthy become a rage?
Beijing-based physician Ji Xiaolong says that since many Chinese,
especially those living in cities, are free from worries about food
and clothing now, they have started paying more attention to their
health to improve the quality of life further.
Another reason, Ji says, could be the drawbacks the overall
medical care system suffers from.
Despite the government's concerted efforts to bring the entire
population under a basic healthcare safety net, about 400 million
people didn't have any medical insurance till last year, Minister
of Health Chen Zhu said in a report submitted to the National
People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature.
High medical costs have made it difficult for many people to see
a doctor or get admitted to hospital. Medical experts say many of
the diseases inflicting people today are incurable. "So prevention
is far better than trying to cure them," senior citizen Lin Qing
told China News Week in Fujian. "If such health books were
available when we were young, I wound have been healthier now."
Echoing Lin's remark, Chen said disease control and prevention
should come first. During his first official inspection visit to
the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in
October, he said the health of 1.3 billion Chinese people couldn't
be safeguarded by visits to doctors and taking medicines alone.
As health experts say, every 1 yuan spent on prevention would
save the country 6 yuan on treating diseases. To realize that goal,
the government has spent 10.5 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) to build
2,448 disease prevention and control centers across the country and
link them via a computer network since 2003, Xinhua has
reported.
The World Health Organization (WHO), too, asks countries to
integrate prevention medical services into public healthcare to
overhaul many costly and disabling conditions such as
cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes, which are linked to
preventable risk factors.
But at present, most preventive medical measures in China don't
come under the health insurance umbrella, though the State
Council's preliminary blueprint for healthcare reforms released at
the end of last year does highlight prevention. The government,
however, is committed to spending more on healthcare, disease
control/prevention and medical services.
"Disease prevention must be made the top priority of the
country's health service," Chen said. If the healthcare model
focuses on treating diseases, it would be difficult even for the
most developed country to afford the heavy medical bill. And China
is a huge country with a massive population, he warned.
"Why are health education and preventive services severely
neglected? Because they do not guarantee hospitals' income. As a
result, simple conditions are often treated at very high cost."
That is WHO Director-General Margaret Chan's remarks speaking on
China's case.
Subsidies provided by the Ministry of Health and its provincial
and other local bureaus account for only 5 percent of the money the
public or State-owned hospitals spend to keep going. Hence,
hospitals choose to transfer their need for money to customers -
the patients - to sustain their daily operations and boost staff
pay.
Some hospitals reportedly "cash in" on patients' desperation by
over-prescribing drugs and ordering unnecessary medical check-ups.
The government is reforming the healthcare system to exactly
redress this grievance. And the final reform plan is due to be
released in March, shortly after the annual NPC meeting, the
Guangzhou-based Modern Express quoted Chen as having said.
The government has launched a series of practical public health
campaigns, mainly to raise people's health awareness. The Beijing
health administration, for instance, began free distribution of
spoons and pots designed to set daily limits for salt and cooking
oil consumption from last year.
Health comes from daily routine living, says Henk Bekedam,
former chief China representative of WHO. Despite great efforts and
progress in public health, China still faces a lot of challenges,
including obesity, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.
"These are highly preventable," Bekedam says. And the only way to
prevent them is by developing good living habits and exercising
regularly.
(China Daily January 25, 2008)
