White paper on medical and health services in China

Patriotic health campaign has gained fruitful results. Patriotic health campaign, an invention of China that has been in existence for 60 years so far, is a social welfare undertaking featuring massive public participation and a close relationship with the public health. Following the principle of taking prevention first, the campaign has reduced the hazards of infectious diseases and promoted the public health through a series of measures, such as exterminating pests, health education and promotion, improving rural water supply and sanitation, building "healthy cities and towns," and improving the environmental hygiene in both urban and rural areas. A wholesome atmosphere is taking shape, with everyone participating in the campaign and enjoying a healthy lifestyle. Now, China is exploring a better working mechanism for building "healthy cities and towns," based on the 153 cities, 32 districts and 456 towns (counties) that have been nominated "healthy" for their wholesome surroundings.

Health emergency management capability has been enhanced. China is striving to make its health emergency management more standard and law-based by issuing the Law on Emergency Management and the Regulations on Preparedness for and Response to Public Health Emergencies, and amending the Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. Based on the disease prevention and control system, the public health monitoring system and the medical service system, China has basically set up a response system for public health emergencies featuring unified leadership, reasonable distribution, quick response, efficient operation and powerful logistics. China has established and improved health emergency plans, which cover the prevention and control of such public health emergencies as acute infectious disease emergencies, diseases with unknown causes and poisoning incidents, medical rescue in case of natural disasters, disastrous accidents and terrorist attacks, and medical services for important events. A four-level emergency management system has been established that covers the national, provincial, city and county levels. Also has been established is the public health emergency response ability assessment system. The central government has organized 27 teams for health emergencies to respond to four categories of incidents, namely, infectious disease control, medical rescue, poisoning treatment, and nuclear and radiation accident handling. Local governments have also set up professional teams to handle health emergencies at their respective levels. China's medicine reserve system keeps improving, ensuring sufficient supply of medicines for health emergencies. In the past few years, China has successfully dealt with many public health emergencies, especially pandemic threats of infectious diseases, including SARS, H1N1, plague and avian influenza, carried out urgent medical rescues for the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan Province, 2010 Yushu earthquake in Qinghai Province and 2010 Zhouqu mudslide in Gansu Province, and provided medical services for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and 2010 Shanghai Expo.

Online direct report system has been enforced for notifiable infectious diseases and public health emergencies. The online direct report system, which puts the 39 infectious diseases defined by law and public health emergencies under real-time and online surveillance, was not available in China until 2004. By 2011, the online direct reporting of infectious diseases had been extended to all disease prevention and control institutes, 98% of medical institutions at and above the county level, and 94% of township clinics in China.

IV.

Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Non-communicable Disorders

Accelerated industrialization, urbanization and ageing of the population have brought about a trend of a continuous and rapid increase in the incidence of chronic diseases and mortality caused by such diseases. At present, about 260 million Chinese have been diagnosed to have contracted chronic diseases that have caused 85% of total deaths in China and incurred 70% of total medical costs.

The Chinese government regards chronic disease prevention and treatment as an important task in improving the people's health and well-being. It has established step by step a nationwide prevention and treatment service for chronic diseases, adopted level-by-level management over certain major chronic diseases, implemented a comprehensive control strategy, enhanced the overall prevention and treatment capacity over chronic diseases, made efforts to reduce factors that cause chronic diseases and bring down the morbidity and mortality of chronic diseases as well as disability caused by them.