World Bank provides $600m loan for health reform in Anhui, Fujian

The World Bank has provided China $600 million loan to support its health reform, the biggest single loan the organization has ever provided to the country in the health sector, China's top health authority announced on Friday.

The loan will support Anhui and Fujian provinces in eastern China to promote across the two provinces experience in health reform gained in Sanming city, Fujian province, including promoting the establishment of a tiered health care system and promoting integrating information technologies with healthcare services, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Li Bin, minister in charge of the commission, said that the projects to be carried out under the loan will be of great significance to intensify China's health reform. The projects will help Anhui and Fujian to solve problems they meet in healthcare reform better and more quickly, and promote successful experiences in more areas in China.

Useful international experience in healthcare reform is expected to be introduced to China to boost the nation's healthcare reform, while China may provide its successful experience to the world, she said.

Notable progress has been made in healthcare reform in China in the past few years, with more than 95 percent of Chinese having been covered by the government's basic medical care insurance programs, according to the commission.

Authorities have taken various reform measures so public hospitals, the major medical care service provider in China and the primary subject of the healthcare reform, can improve services and return to non-profit nature in the past few years.

This includes encouraging better distribution of medical resources between big and smaller hospitals, and ordering all public hospitals in China to stop price markup of drugs they sold to patients before the end of September, which has been practiced for decades.