Timeline of key healthcare milestones

?1952

China establishes the Patriotic Health Campaign, primarily aiming to improve sanitation and control infectious diseases.

?1971

Chinese scientist Tu Youyou discovers a traditional Chinese cure for malaria and ultimately extracts a compound called artemisinin.

Her discovery has saved millions of lives worldwide and earned her a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2015.

?1978

China rolls out a national immunization program, encompassing four routine childhood vaccines against six diseases.

The program now contains 14 vaccines that can protect against 15 diseases.

?1984

China's Drug Administration Law is inaugurated, which significantly improves the scientific management of drug manufacturers, sellers and other related institutions.

The law underwent a major revision in 2019, with the goal of toughening crackdowns on violators and promoting drug innovation.

?1985

China initiates a round of healthcare reform centering around the principles of relaxing policies, streamlining administration and delegating powers, raising funds from various sources and diversifying development approaches.

?1998

China creates the urban employee basic medical insurance program as part of efforts to create a stronger safety net for its people.

?2003

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, prompts the establishment of the nation's emergency medical response system.

?2007

China realizes the target of reducing the mortality rate for those under 5 by two-thirds from 2000 to 2015 as set out in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals seven years ahead of the schedule.

The target of lowering the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters was also achieved a year in advance in 2014.

?2009

China launches a new round of healthcare reform, aiming to provide affordable and equitable basic healthcare for all.

?2011

China's first domestically developed, small-molecule, targeted anticancer drug is granted market authorization. It took eight years to create the drug named Icotinib, which is used to treat non-small cell lung cancer.

?2013

The National Health Commission replaces the national health and family planning commission as the nation's top health authority. Its establishment reflects a focus from illness treatment in the past to improving overall health conditions.

?2015

China allows all couples to have two children, abandoning its decades-long one-child policy.

?2017

China reaches zero domestic cases of malaria for the first time.

After reporting no local cases for four consecutive years, the nation was awarded a malaria-free certification from the World Health Organization in 2021.

?2018

The National Healthcare Security Administration is inaugurated. A slew of measures, such as bulk procurement of drugs and high-value medical consumables and regular adjustment of the national medical reimbursement list, have since been rolled out to ease the medical burden of patients and improve affordable access to medicines.

?2019

China launches the Healthy China initiative, a national drive aimed at intervening in health-influencing factors, protecting full life cycle health and controlling major diseases.

?2021

The National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, a body dedicated to disease control, is inaugurated amid the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen the nation's public health system.