The price of medicines in China should be cut and a series of measures are in the works to stop rapid hikes, a senior health official Wednesday.

Prices of nearly 1,000 medicines have already been cut since 2001, saving consumers 30 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion), State pricing authorities said.

Still, statistics show there is still a lot of room for medicine prices both set by the government and adjusted by the market to drop, said Gao Qiang, vice minister of health.

The prices should be adjusted based on the real situation, said Gao at a national conference on the pricing of medicines and medical services, jointly held by the ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission.

Meanwhile, purchases of medicines by medical institutions will be better regulated, Gao said.

And the technical criteria for doctors to use medicines on patients will be improved so that doctors use medicine more reasonably, he added.

Experts estimate that 12 to 32 per cent of the medicines used in hospitals are not reasonable.

Li Shenglin, vice director of the commission, said at the conference that since 2001, the country has adjusted the maximum prices of five batches of medicines included in the national list of medicines for basic medical insurance.

To date, the maximum sale prices of 1,077 medicines on the list have been lowered, while pricing authorities at the provincial level have also cut the sale prices of medicines which are under provincial management.

Three inspections have been conduced in about 80,000 medical institutions and 85,000 pricing violations were found.

According to Li, the sale prices of medicines in 2001, 2002 and 2003 dropped by 1.5 per cent, 3.5 per cent and 1.7 per cent respectively.

High prices have long been preventing Chinese patients, especially those with economic difficulties, from going to hospitals, where doctors tend to ask patients to buy expensive medicines which help boost the hospitals' income.

In addition, hospitals have been known to carry out under-the-table deals with medicine sellers and illegally overcharge patients.

Still, many people are skeptical about the real benefits of the price cuts.

"I am not sure, because they always try to make these efforts but medicines and medical services are still too expensive for common people," said Jiang Jing, a 56-year-old unemployed worker in Beijing.

To resolve the existing problems, medical treatments and medicine sales should be managed separately, the medical insurance system be improved, and laws be perfected, experts say.

(China Daily June 10, 2004)