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China Focus: China boosts healthcare service provision, prioritizing vulnerable groups

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E-mail Xinhua, September 26, 2024

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BEIJING, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- Liang Weiguo, 77, a villager from the underdeveloped northwest of China, suffers from two chronic diseases -- high blood pressure and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. But with a contracted family doctor, he lives a happy old age, free from worries about the accessibility or affordability of the medical services he needs.

"I just make a phone call, and then I can see a doctor at home. This is something I couldn't imagine 10 years ago," said Liang from a village in the inland province of Gansu.

The family doctor service sprouted in China around 2016. According to the National Health Commission, such services are mainly provided by public medical and healthcare institutions at the primary level.

A new document issued in 2022 rolled out more measures to further promote the program, including expanding service supplies, improving grassroots medical services and prioritizing vulnerable groups.

"Previously, it took me at least a whole day to go to a hospital in the county seat. Now, it's more convenient, and the charge for medicines is lower," said Liang.

Family doctors epitomize China's unremitting efforts to ensure that its population of over 1.4 billion, both in urban and rural areas, has access to quality and affordable medical services.

MEETING BASIC NEEDS

Official data showed that by the end of 2021, there were 1.44 million family doctors across the country. It is expected that by 2035, over 75 percent of Chinese people will be covered by such services.

However, 75 years ago, it was a totally different story. When the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, there was a serious lack of medical resources -- only an average of 0.67 licensed physicians available for every 1,000 persons -- with little chance of having a family doctor like Liang's.

Since the founding of the PRC, especially after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012, greater importance has increasingly been attached to safeguarding people's health. In this process, meeting the basic medical needs of people in rural and underdeveloped areas is deemed necessary.

The Chinese government has pledged to deepen reforms to increase the availability of quality medical resources and see that such resources are channeled toward the community level and more evenly distributed among the regions.

Localities have responded with concrete actions, with some top hospitals dispatching medical experts and personnel to primary-level ones on a regular basis, and others opening long-distance services for patients in rural areas.

"When we have difficulties with treatment, higher-level hospitals will give us online guidance," said Liu Wenju, a village doctor in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. "They also provide call-out and patient-transfer services, making sure that each villager can receive effective treatment."

With these concerted efforts, China aims to establish a tiered diagnosis and treatment system, seeing that patients can turn to their nearest medical institutions for sound treatment, instead of going to places far away. By the end of 2021, there were 23,000 medical and healthcare institutions at the county level across China, 35,000 based in towns and nearly 600,000 covering all villages.

The Chinese people, once humiliated as the "Sick Man of East Asia" due to their poor health condition, have an average life expectancy of 78.6 years, more than double that of 75 years ago.

MAKING SERVICES AFFORDABLE

Lenvatinib, a liver cancer medication, used to cost approximately 16,800 yuan (about 2,388 U.S. dollars) per packet. Despite its high price, patient Li Hui usually needs to take three packets a month.

"Thanks to the centralized bulk-buying scheme, the price of Lenvatinib has been slashed to 789 yuan per packet," Li said.

Government-led bulk procurement of drugs and medical consumables is one of the solutions China applies to reduce medical costs. It had organized nine rounds of centralized bulk drug procurement, with the prices of 374 drugs more than halved and the total medical costs cut by about 500 billion yuan.

China has spent decades working to ease people's financial burdens from medical expenses. A world's largest basic medical insurance network has been built.

The network, serving as the milestone of China's multi-level medical security system, encompasses basic medical insurance, medical assistance and major disease insurance, particularly giving priority to poor people.

The program has delivered tangible benefits to the Chinese people. Official data shows that in 2023 alone, more than 180 million instances of medical service provision were made to low-income rural residents. Thanks to this program, their medical costs were reduced by more than 188 billion yuan in total.

China also supports the development of additional medical security programs, such as commercial insurance, social charity and special medical funds. "These inputs are a supplement to the basic medical insurance scheme and will better satisfy people's diverse and rapidly changing demands for medical security," said Zhang Ke, director of the National Healthcare Security Administration.

FIGHTING DISEASES WITH INNOVATION

Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is one of the most dangerous form of leukemia. Thanks to a therapy developed by a leading Chinese hematologist, the five-year survival rate for APL has been raised from 10 percent to more than 97 percent.

Wang Zhenyi, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, spent eight years on the research and development of a differentiation-inducing therapy. In 1986, a five-year-old APL patient tried the novel therapy for the first time, and it worked. The symptoms of the little girl vanished within a month, and she has been leading a normal life ever since.

The therapy reignited the hope of 3,000 to 4,000 new APL patients in China each year. Now the anti-APL medicine can be purchased at a price of 300 yuan a packet, and the therapy is accessible to patients worldwide.

Generation after generation, Chinese medical workers like Wang have made tireless efforts to fight major diseases that pose serious risks to people's health. In recent years, there has been a rapid growth of independently-developed new drugs, enriching and optimizing patients' medication options.

Since 2012, 31 new anti-cancer drugs have been approved in China. Notably, Icotinib, a China-developed targeted drug, has far fewer side effects than traditional anti-cancer drugs, according to Jiang Jiandong, former president of the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

"Some new drugs have explored new ways to combat cancer, causing fewer side effects and relieving patients' suffering. More anti-cancer medicines will be seen in the near future," said Jiang. Enditem