Medical and Health Services in China

(scio.gov.cn)

Updated: 2014-06-13

Access to basic public health services has become more equitable. The state provides all residents with a free package of 41 basic public health services in ten categories, including health record, health education, preventive inoculation, healthcare for children under six, healthcare for pregnant and lying-in women, healthcare for elderly people, treatment for hypertension and type II diabetes patients, healthcare for severe psychosis patients, reporting and handling of infectious diseases and public health emergencies, and healthcare supervision and coordination. Targeting special diseases, key groups and special areas, the state has launched key public health service programs, including subsidizing rural pregnant women for hospitalized childbirth, re-vaccinating people under 15 against hepatitis B, eliminating fluorosis caused by coal burning, supplementary taking of folic acid by rural women before pregnancy and in the early stage of pregnancy, building sanitary toilets, cataract removal for poor patients, cervical and breast cancer tests for rural women within eligible age, and preventing mother-to-child transmission of AIDS. In 2011, the inoculation rate of the National Immunization Program (NIP) exceeded 90%; the rate of hospitalized childbirth nationwide reached 98.7% (98.1% in rural areas); and the maternity mortality rate in rural areas kept going down. In the rural areas, 72.1% of the population had access to tap water and 69.2% had access to sanitary toilets. In 2009, the government launched a program to provide cataract operations for a million poor patients, and by 2011 more than 1.09 million such people had had such operations with government subsidies.

Medical and Health Services in China-Figure 7: Rural hospitalized childbirth rate (%) and rural maternal mortality rate (one in 100,000) from 1990 to 2011, according to a white paper released by the Information Office of the State Council on Dec. 26, 2012.