When China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission convened a rural health work conference in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, on April 2, it had a summary of the work, reforms and development, with the minister praising the rural health work accomplishments and calling for the personnel involved to find ways to solve major problems and deal with challenges.

In addressing the gathering, Li Bin pointed to the Chinese achievements in rural medical and health care reforms that have helped make rural areas better off but added that there are still many problems and challenges, including less than desirable medical infrastructure, insufficient and unbalanced resources, shrinking medical services, and an unreasonable rural doctor arrangement.

Li said that those problems will just get worse as rural people’s medical needs increase, then asked personnel to improve the more essential medicines, find forms of compensation and personnel distribution in rural communities; make better use of the rural health service network and the new rural cooperative medical system, develop more talent for medical care services, push for critical illness insurance and trans-provincial medical bill settlements, and improve the new rural cooperative medical system.

She also called for a better elderly-care policy, and stronger rural doctor development, better infrastructure, better medical service procedures, greater medical quality and safety, and for more satisfactory rural medical institutes, while continuing the national public health services.

Also on hand to speak to the gathering was Wang Guosheng, governor of Hubei, and Ma Xiaowei, an NHFPC vice-minister, who hosted the event.