PROPERLY UNDERSTAND MAJOR ISSUES IN BUILDING A HEALTHY CHINA

PROPERLY UNDERSTAND MAJOR ISSUES IN BUILDING A HEALTHY CHINA*

August 19, 2016

Health is directly related to wellbeing. It is also a matter of great social and political significance. In promoting a healthy China, we should follow the Chinese health development path and tackle major problems. 

First, we should adhere to sound public health guidelines, which constitute a general requirement. China’s current public health guidelines are as follows: focusing on community-level improvement, encouraging reform and innovation, prioritizing prevention, laying equal emphasis on Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), incorporating health care into all our policies, and ensuring the people contribute to the cause and share the benefits.

Public health guidelines should meet the needs of the people and address outstanding problems in medical and health services in a specified period of time. Soon after the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, we stipulated that health services were there to serve workers, farmers and soldiers, that prevention should be prioritized, that both Western medicine and TCM should be utilized, and that health promotion and public involvement should be integral to the guidelines. Our goals were to accelerate the building of a system of sanitation, personal hygiene, and disease prevention, to prevent and eliminate infectious diseases, and to quickly improve the people’s health. At the health conference held in 1996, we set the guidelines of focusing on the rural areas, prioritizing prevention, laying equal emphasis on Western medicine and TCM, relying on science and education, encouraging public participation, promoting public health, and serving socialist modernization. These guidelines played an important role in promoting the development of China’s medical and health services in different periods. 

Our latest public health guidelines were designed on the basis of an in-depth analysis of the general trends in medical and health services in our country. Focusing on community-level improvement means expanding the scope of the focus from rural areas to grassroots communities in both rural and urban areas, with the goal of strengthening their capability in preventing and treating diseases. This is in line with the requirements of urbanization and balanced development across rural and urban areas and among different regions. Encouraging reform and innovation means furthering medical and health institutional reform and doing all we can to promote innovation in theory, institutions, management and technology. Prioritizing prevention and laying equal emphasis on Western medicine and TCM means adhering to and carrying forward past practices that have long proven their effectiveness. Incorporating health care into all our policies and ensuring the people contribute to the cause and share the benefits means putting greater emphasis on the government’s responsibility for overall planning and coordination, relying more on the people, and encouraging the initiative, creativity, and participation of the whole of society, with an understanding of the pervasive, societal, and holistic nature of the factors affecting health. Underpinning the guidelines are the people-centered philosophy of development and a commitment to serving the people’s needs in health. This is and has been the basic orientation of our country’s medical and health services. 

Second, we should uphold the public interest in our medical and health services. What is most precious to a human being is his or her life. “A human life is more valuable than tonnes of gold.” Medical and health services are related to the life and health of everyone and the wellbeing and happiness of every family. They constitute a noble and unique cause. 

It is precisely because our Party serves the people wholeheartedly and our country is a socialist country run by the people that we must uphold the public interest in our medical and health services. Deng Xiaoping emphasized that public health departments should make social benefit the sole criterion for their activities. Jiang Zemin pointed out, “Health programs serve the public interest. The government should adopt financial policies to support health programs, and the ultimate objective of health reform and development of health programs should always be social benefit.” Hu Jintao said that continuously improving the people’s health is an important embodiment of the people sharing the fruits of reform and development, an important measure to promote social harmony, and an unshirkable responsibility of the Party and the government. No matter how advanced our society may become, we will always maintain the non-profit nature of medical and health services and reject the path of complete commercialization. Investment from the government should be employed mainly to provide basic medical and health services. We will continue to improve the healthcare system, expand healthcare services, and improve healthcare quality, so that the public can have equal access to systematic and consistent healthcare services including disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and health promotion. 

Third, we should improve the quality and capacity of healthcare services. Basic medical and health services are the foundation and the core. They should be mainly guaranteed by the government and be accessible to all. 

The scope of basic and non-basic healthcare services is not fixed. Economic growth gives the government greater capacity to provide medical and health services and enables the steady advance of medical technology. The scope of basic services can thus be enlarged step by step with higher service standards. Meanwhile, we must also note that the development of basic services should be compatible with our national conditions and stage of development and that the focus should be ensuring people’s access to these services rather than simplistic egalitarianism. Since our country has a large population and is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come, we should expand the scope and raise the standards of basic medical services within our means and to the best of our abilities. We should refrain from making unrealistic promises and raising excessive expectations. 

Fourth, we should balance the roles of the government and the market. In developing medical and health services, we should properly define the roles of the two parties. The government should fulfill its responsibility to provide basic healthcare services. It should play a leading role and carry out its responsibility in guidance, support, administration and supervision. It should provide basic medical services for the people through multiple means and support basic medical research. At the same time, it should introduce reasonable competition mechanisms, and encourage the non-government sector to run non-profit medical institutions. 

The market should be active and dynamic in other healthcare areas. We should encourage the non-government sector to provide services to meet the diverse, varied, and individual health needs of the people. We should ease market access, widen investment and financing channels, and remove policy barriers. We should also increase the supply of medical and health resources and optimize their structure. The government should improve regulation and administration, sanction in accordance with the law those involved in illegal activities such as unlicensed practice, and safeguard the people’s right to health.

* Part of the speech at the National Health Conference.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)