Wu Jinglei, director of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission [Photo/Xinhua]

China has been making hygiene and public health more fair and accessible in the past 40 years. Groups of doctors have been deployed to Xinjiang Uygur and the Tibet autonomous regions and have trained many medical teams for locals. Through the measures of health poverty alleviation, poverty caused by disease has been reduced and more people are on their way to being well-off.

Wu Jinglei, a director of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, has been thinking of ways to improve the medical service capabilities of Shanghai as well as other regions of China. He and his team innovatively proposed an idea of “doctor-group aiding” for the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

So-called "doctor-group aiding" integrates doctors from the clinical specialties of major hospitals in Shanghai into teams to assist medical institutions in Kashi inXinjiang. After eight-years of hard work, the level of medical services in Kashi has improved substantially. By 2020, the infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, incidence rate of infectious disease and per capita life expectancy in the region are expected to reach the national average level.

The "doctor-group aiding" to Xinjiang has not only fundamentally improved healthcare in Kashi, but has also provided advanced management experience and quality medical services.

The Chinese people's right to be healthy, to survive and develop, has been guaranteed and developed to the greatest extent, laying the foundation for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, Wu said.

Shen Ji, secretary of the Leading Party Members Group of the Health Commission of Sichuan Province, has always cared about the hygiene and health of the four major poverty-stricken districts of Qinba mountain area, Wumen mountain area, the Tibetan plateau region, and the Yi ethnic region of the Liangshan mountain area. He said he dreams to increase the locals’ healthy behaviors and improve their lifestyles and health literacy while accelerating poverty alleviation in the regions.

The health authorities in Sichuan province launched a targeted three-step program to checked poor individual’s health problems in 161 poverty-stricken counties among the province’s total 183 counties, learning diseases and financial burdens caused by the illness in every households and individuals in poverty. They then formed a clinical consultancy management system for people in poverty, one of the first such systems in China.

At the same time, the health institutions implemented various targeted campaigns for poor individuals and regions such as medical relief and support, public health guarantees, improving medical services capabilities, medical personnel cultivation and orderly reproduction. By the end of 2017, the poor population caused by illness had dropped to 750,000 from 1.84 million and 21 counties in the province had escaped poverty.

Diseases shouldn’t be a cause of poverty and poverty alleviation by health policies should continue, said Shen.

Decades ago, China showed the world that it was possible to improve hundreds of millions of people’s health and extensively extend life expectancy. Today, the country, again, is one of the first to implement advanced reform on basic medical services, prioritizing patients and setting them free from the huge financial burden of medical services. We believe that the reforms will improve the health system that serves all Chinese residents who account for about one sixth of world’s population, said Jin Yong, president of the World Bank.