Assistance improves healthcare imbalance

When neurologist Luo Bin was sent from his Beijing hospital to a county-level hospital in Inner Mongolia in 2020, he was saddened to see the scale of the patients' unmet medical needs.

During his seven-month stint in the autonomous region, his name was added to the list of the hundreds of medical specialists and other experts that have been sent to Inner Mongolia since 1998 to pass on their skills and help balance the nation's disparities in expertise.

Luo, from the capital's Aerospace Center Hospital, specializes in thrombolysis, a minimally invasive procedure to dissolve blood clots and restore the flow of cerebral blood in patients with ischemic stroke. The doctor is so skilled at the technique that he performs 500 of them annually in Beijing.

"At that time, at the People's Hospital of Horqin Right Wing Front Banner, the most common treatment for acute stroke was clot-busting medications, which often cannot resolve the underlying issue of the narrowing of blood vessels nor greatly improve these patients' quality of life," he said.

Luo's arrival and that of several other medical aid workers were aimed at changing the status quo. Through the aid program, they carried out 150 thrombolysis procedures and trained three local doctors in the practice.

"By the time we left, the local demand for the procedure could be met and patients no longer need to travel to larger cities for the therapy," he said.

Luo is part of the broader drive in China to narrow the urban-rural gap in healthcare services. This drive has played an irreplaceable role in elevating the nation's average life expectancy over the past 75 years.

Lei Haichao, head of the National Health Commission, said at a news conference in September that the average life expectancy — one of the three key indicators of a nation's health level — rose to 78.6 years last year in China, compared to 35 years around 1949 and 73.5 years in 2012.

The global average life expectancy was 73.2 years last year and 72.6 years in 2022, according to the World Health Organization.

The two other health benchmarks — the mortality rates for children under five years old and pregnant women — have also fallen significantly in the past 75 years. Data shows that the nation's mortality rate of for those under 5 years old decreased from 200 to 6.2 per 1,000 births during the period, and the maternal mortality rate dropped from 1,500 to 15.1 per 100,000 births.

"Such levels are the best in our history and are also parallel with levels in middle- and high-income countries across the globe," Lei said.

Lei noted that a shortage of high-quality medical resources and their uneven distribution have been a global issue, and that China has taken a three-pronged approach to tackle it.

Those approaches are to expand access to quality healthcare services, to increase the overall capacity and quality of medical resources through establishing regional and national medical centers, and to make use of 5G and other advanced technologies to improve medical outcomes.