Even Distribution of Medical Care Resources

By staff reporter Liu Qiong

Feng Shiliang, director of the Diabetes Medical Center of Liaoning Province, told the reporter at the ongoing session of the CPPCC that building medical equality should be the first step of a medical reform. According to Mr. Feng, farmers, who account for 80 percent of Chinese population, have access to only 20 percent of the nation’s medical resources, while city dwellers, the rest 20 percent of the people, enjoy 80 percent.

In his regular trips to the countryside Mr. Feng discovered that rural hospitals are chronically plagued by fund shortage, making them unable to provide many needed services to rural residents and therefore adding pressures on urban hospitals. Last April China released a plan on key measures to be taken for the reform on the medical system in the years from 2009 to 2010, promising a total investment of RMB 850 billion by governments of various levels into public health sector during the period, including RMB 331.8 billion from the central government. Mr. Feng was glad that a good share of the money would go to grass-root-level hospitals. For instance, as he has long advocated, a sum, approximately RMB 500 million, is earmarked to get ECG monitors into all county hospitals in the nation.

Mr. Feng also suggested measures to divert patients to neighborhood hospitals in a bid to ease overcrowdness in bigger hospitals. According to his study, China now has 5.9 million medical workers, the overworked 10 percent of them are all in big hospitals. To woo more patients, neighborhood hospitals must improve their service, and offer more attractive medicine prices. All these need policy support from the government.