A world alliance on orthopaedics was established in Beijing on Thursday in a bid to pool global resources and improve developing nations' capacities to fight orthopaedic challenges.

About 70 countries and regions will support and participate in the World Orthopaedic Alliance (WOA), a non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of high-quality care in this branch of medicine within developing countries.

The WOA aims to develop a mechanism to bridge the gap between clinical orthopaedic physicians and companies in the industry, according to Wang Yan, who was elected the WOA's founding chairman.

Wang, who is also president of the Chinese Orthopaedic Association(COA), said the WOA will serve as a platform for surgeons and medical equipment companies to cooperate and improve orthopaedics services.

An important mission of the WOA is to work with government departments, medical equipment companies, doctors and hospitals to create an innovative, comprehensive and cost-effective pattern of thinking that suits local cultures so as to promote medical education, clinical practice, as well as product research and development.

The world is facing more orthopaedics challenges as a result of an aging population and a huge number of motor vehicle accidents, natural disasters, and emerging infectious diseases, experts say.

In China alone, three percent of its more than 1.3 billion people have osteoarthritis and more than 40 million suffer from joint diseases, according to COA statistics.

Challenges in orthopaedics will become greater in China given its rapidly aging population. It is estimated that the country's senior population, or those above 60 years old, will hit 243 million by 2020, accounting for 18 percent of its total population.

The establishment of the WOA runs concurrently with the opening of the Seventh International Congress of the COA.

With a registered membership of more than 30,000 orthopaedic physicians, the COA is the largest specialized professional society in both the medical community of China and among orthopaedic associations around the world.

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