China needs more nurses

China needs more nurses, the Beijing Daily reported Monday.

The Chinese Ministry of Health has required that the ratio of doctors to nurses in hospitals be one to 2.3 and that that of patients to nurses be one to 0.4, the paper reported, saying only 10 percent of Chinese hospitals are up to the standard.

Among the six million medical professionals in China, nurses make up only about 1.266 million, one in every thousand Chinese people, the Chinese Nursing Association (CNA) was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Beijing has 34,000 nurses, 3.61 out of every thousand people, the CNA said.

The CNA, a professional organization of Chinese nurses, aims at uniting all nurses, developing nursing profession, promoting and spreading nursing science and technology. It recently commemorated its 95th anniversary.

In recent years, China has improved its nursing education and university graduates with nursing majors exceeded 50,000 in 2003, the newspaper said. It is still not enough to satisfy demand, the paper said.