Beijing comes out fighting fit in health report

Beijing ranked first in health among major Chinese cities, with its major health indicators reaching the level of high-income countries, a report showed.

The report, released by the Institute for China Sustainable Urbanization of Tsinghua University in Beijing on Tuesday, collected data since 2021 about health services, the health industry, health behaviour, the health infrastructure, health environment and health utilities, aiming to give a comprehensive assessment for a total of 296 Chinese cities. It's the third year for the institute to make the survey.

Health levels of Chinese cities increased stably over the last three years, the report showed. Health levels of small and medium-sized cities grew quickly, narrowing the gap between them and bigger cities. The number of cities that played a leading role in the health sector also continuously increased, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Nanjing, Jiangsu province and Shenzhen, Guangdong province.

Among them, Beijing outplayed all other cities surveyed. Tang Weimin, an official from the Beijing Health Commission, said that average life expectancy of Beijing residents with hukou, or household registration, increased from 82.15 in 2017 to 82.47 in 2021. Infant mortality rate dropped from 2.29 percent in 2017 to 1.26 percent in 2022. And its major health indexes have reached that of high-income countries.

She added that Beijing is working to build a healthy and livable environment, deepen reform of medical and health systems and build strong barriers to public health security, to offer comprehensive health services and improve people's health level.

Across the country, most of the indexes showed a trend of improvement, such as the prevention and control of heavy pollution and actual reimbursement ratio of hospitalization expenses under basic medical insurance. However, some indexes, such as time for outdoor exercises and per capita sports facilities, dropped, the report showed.

Health industries have also improved since 2018, with significant growth in the number of health companies, the scale of investment and technological support, it said.

Jiang Shengyao, Director of the institute, said that the research result expects to help the government at different levels to learn about development trends of health and improve governance capability.

The indexes will be open to the public at a newly-opened website in a month.