News abounds about new schemes concerning public health as the
new year begins.
Beijing media reports that all residents of the city will be
able to enjoy a medical insurance scheme that will help them pay
for operations or the treatment of serious diseases that cost more
than 2,000 yuan ($267). Residents who apply for the insurance will
only have to pay 50 yuan a year.
Almost at the same time, a local Guangdong bureau of labor and
social security revealed that the province will introduce a new
medical aid plan that will offer financial support to the
poverty-stricken or lower-income people who seek medical treatment
for any disease. At present, there is still a limit to the kind of
illnesses for which these people can get monetary assistance.
Meanwhile, the health minister and vice-health minister jointly
published an article this week elaborating on an ambitious national
plan that aims to improve the health of all Chinese with the goal
of reaching the level of developed countries by the year 2020.
All this is good news, but I believe it will take patience and
hard work to achieve the goals. For instance, early last year,
Beijing started to promote medical insurance for the young and
elderly.
The young range from babies to senior middle school students.
The elderly are those who have no institutional affiliation and do
not have any health coverage. But when my husband and I took our
daughter to the nearest neighborhood committee to register for the
medical insurance in late September, we were initially told that
our daughter was ineligible.
The person in charge later told us that we must produce a letter
from the school ascertaining that our daughter is attending classes
to prepare for college entrance examinations this summer to be able
to obtain the insurance.
At first I could not understand why some strings were being
attached to the medical insurance that should be universally
enjoyed. But after I visited the neighborhood committee office a
few times and saw the piles of certificates of medical insurance,
and the crowd of elderly people waiting to get reimbursed, did I
realize how troublesome the work was for staff handling the
applications and approvals. They are simply short-handed to deal
with the increasing services they must provide for the growing
population of the retired and elderly.
In fact, according to local media reports, about 400,000
unemployed and disabled residents in Beijing are not covered by
medical insurance.
But Beijing is one of the few regions in the country with
arguably the widest health coverage for its residents. There are
even more serious challenges to provide quality basic medical care
in remote and ethnic minority populated areas.
I remember visiting three years ago a small rural clinic in a
mountain village in Cangyuan, in Yunnan Province, on the border
between China and Myanmar. It had just one room furnished with a
wooden bed, a table, a stove and a cupboard.
The rural "doctor", about 25, only went through rudimentary
medical training and did not possess a diploma. But she was the
"trained doctor" who cared for the villagers and pregnant
women.
I remember the then local health bureau chief lamenting the fact
that those who graduate from medical colleges and universities do
not want to work in the main hospitals in the remote county, let
alone in the villages. The county itself was short of quality
medical doctors.
Thus, however ambitious the new universal healthcare plan will
be, we have a long way to go to ensure health for all, the
millennium goal the United Nations set seven years ago.
(China Daily January 3, 2008)