The Ministry of Health has pledged to widen medical reforms to allow most Chinese, especially those living in rural areas, to benefit from proper medical services.

The government will give priority to increasing investment to build up the public health infrastructure, especially in the countryside, Vice Minister of Health Zhu Qingsheng said in Shanghai on February 28.

Zhu said the ministry is busy establishing both early-warning and emergency-preparedness systems across the nation to better cope with epidemics such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

Construction of a multimillion-US-dollar nationwide disease prevention and control system has begun. The first phase includes a national disease prevention and control center for which 634 million yuan (US$76 million) was allocated. The total investment for local disease prevention projects has reached 6.8 billion yuan (US$819 million), Zhu said.

More than 3 billion yuan (US$361 million) was earmarked last year to build an urban emergency aid system connecting large and medium-sized hospitals, he noted. County-level hospitals and those above that level have been urged to establish infectious disease departments and protective zones to better control epidemics.

Zhu said planners will concentrate on four major areas of reform in the medical system in the next few years.

The first is completing a government-led basic medical service and public health security system.

Second will be encouraging the expansion of nongovernmental medical investment and developing private, foreign-funded and shareholding, for-profit hospitals.

Improving community health service institutes to build up a two-tier medical system is third on the list.

Finally, enhancing management and supervision of the health industry.

Medical experts acknowledge that the relatively expensive but low-quality medical services and fragmentary medical service coverage in rural areas has bottlenecked the development of the country's health industry.

The new medical reform measures will give rural residents better access to medical assistance by joining the new, cooperative medicare system.

The cooperatives, which are similar to medical insurance institutions and are being utilized in four pilot provinces, require contributions both from individual farmers and the government so that a funding pool is built up to cover treatment costs at set amounts for serious illnesses.

Vice Premier Wu Yi has urged local governments to enhance pilot medicare measures for farmers and their families.

Some 108.9 million city residents across China were already covered by a basic medical insurance network by the end of last year.

But the health network is incomplete and is especially fragile in China's rural areas, with most of rural populations still uncovered by any medicare system, Wu said.

A recent survey by the Beijing-based Horizon Research Institute shows that only 12 percent of farmers are covered by medical insurance, including government and commercial insurance, while the number in cities is 54 percent.

The central government is determined to set up an effective welfare system to offer medicare to 780 million farmers. The system is scheduled to be expanded to cover all farmers by 2010.

So far, more than 43 million farmers have enjoyed trial medicare insurance.

(China Daily March 1, 2004)