Healthy China 2030 Status: Work-In-Progress

To participate in Global Health Governance and fulfill the UN SDG agenda, China’s Central party Committee and the State Council issued Healthy China 2030 Plan. The Chinese government is committed to improve the health conditions of its people.

President Xi Jinping has made health of the people a priority, ensuring that it is included in each government policy. He stated that people’s health is a prerequisite for their overall growth, which will in turn have a huge impact on the country’s economic and social development.

Their aim is to go beyond just treating illnesses and promote prevention of diseases. The reforms are also focused towards making medical services accessible and affordable for the people.

Initiatives to improve healthcare system at the community level have been taken. Making sure that people from both rural and urban areas can access public services equally. Public health and basic healthcare services for the people that is being provided is affordable, safe and effective.

Prestigious hospitals and community level clinics have collaborated with each other to establish joint medical treatment mechanisms, as a result the primary level medical services network has improved. This has enabled people to receive high quality basic healthcare services near their home.

Another objective of President Xi was that he wanted to deal with poverty which is a result of illness and the recurrence of poverty due to illness. A policy was designed for people living in poverty, that allowed them to reimburse about more than 90 percent of their hospital medical bills, under a package of insurance and aid policies.

This package included basic medical insurance, serious disease insurance and supplementary medical insurance reimbursement. It proved to be a source of huge support and helped to relieve poverty caused by illness.

A request was personally put forward by President Xi for all the pharmaceutical firms that they need to be sincere and carry out their part to meet their social responsibilities and make sure that all of the medicines and tablets that they are producing are safe and authentic to consume.

China’s commitment to provide safe and reliable drugs in each step from production to sales to its usage can be determined from its actions such as canceling out import tariffs on anticancer drugs, speeding up the examination and approving process for new drugs and developing an all-process drug tracing system.

Investments in research and technology to improve healthcare have also been made.