Gaps within trouble China's health sector

Gaps in China's current health systems have rendered the country's health work generally unharmonious and far from comprehensive, arousing waves of complaints from the masses who suffer exorbitant medical charges.

China started its medical reform eight years ago in a bid to promote better health services for its urban residents via introducing market rules into its health practices, but recently was reckoned a "failure" by the Development Research Center with the State Council, or the Chinese cabinet, one of China's top think tanks.

Chinese Minister of Health Gao Qiang also acknowledged that his ministry's years-long reforms have generally been unsuccessful, citing four overall gaps that have crippled China's health industry .

China's public health system is generally not sound, which has made it very hard for health workers to successfully prevent and control major diseases, said Gao.

Although there is already a 200,000-member disease prevention force at central to county levels in China, Gao said, the poor personnel quality and medical apparatuses and historical lack of public and human resources support have rendered China unable to effectively control the spread of possible major epidemics.

Statistics from the ministry show that China now has about 4.5 million tuberculosis patients, the world's second largest immediately after India, with about 2 million suffering infectious TB.

In some rural areas, diseases caused by intestinal infection, shortage of nutrients, verminosis and epidemics are still out of control.

China's current public health emergency mechanism, though already patched greatly after the 2003 SARS outbreak, said Gao, needs further improvements if the country is to effectively tackle nationwide emergencies rather than merely local or regional ones.

"More work should be done in aspects of working practices, forming more professional and technological forces and preparation work," said Gao.

Compared with the public's increasing health demand, China's existing medical service system lags far behind, he said.

"China's health resources are generally inadequate and lagging behind the country's economic development," said Gao. "The configuration of medical and health resources is unreasonable and the medical safeguard system is unwholesome."

The orders for the circulation and pricing of medicine and medical apparatuses are also in chaos and too expensive, which is mainly the result of the serious lack of a multi-channel medical operation practices in China.

The health ministry said it was now drafting a new reform plan in collaboration with other government departments to soothe the public woe on the soaring medical expenses in recent years, which experts is urgent

"Putting profit ahead of other functions by health institutions not only add burdens to patients, but seriously undermines the image of both medical personnel and public health departments," Gao said.

The minister also criticized China's health management system as unadapted to the country's health needs, citing the fact that the management rights over health resources belong to different governments, industries and enterprises as one of the key reasons.

According to Gao, local health authorities only pay attention to the several hospitals immediately under them and tend to support rather than supervise them.

"The situation has resulted in difficulties for the country to supervise its health sector effectively," said Gao.

Source: Xinhua