Systemic problems infect Chinese health care
By Christy George | May 19, 2010 | China
Arthritis patient receiving acupuncture
Today, we visited a modern and well-equipped teaching hospital in Kunming, in Yunnan Province, on China's southwest border.
It has a cardiac care unit, a neonatal intensive care unit and plenty of diagnostic tools like MRIs, but it also uses traditional Chinese medicine. For instance, we saw an arthritis patient getting acupuncture to help reduce her pain and a stroke patient getting acupuncture to increase her mobility.
The administration told us that officially, the hospital has just 1500 beds, but they routinely find space for 1900, and in a pinch, it's not uncommon for them to squeeze in 2100 people, by triple-bunking people in rooms meant for two.
The hospital has major expansion plans, not only to serve existing patients, but also to help treat a flood of new people crossing borders from Burma, Laos and Vietnam in search of high-quality care.
It seems like a model hospital, but experts here say China's health care system has many shortcomings.
With three billion people and meteoric development that took China's cities from Third World to First World in three decades or less, it's no surprise that experts from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) say the biggest health care problem is access.
In rural China, there just aren't enough hospitals and clinics. In the cities, health care is just too expensive for people without insurance.
Compared to U.S. costs, health care here seems very affordable, but not relative to incomes in China.
We've also heard that the system here of paying doctors low salaries virtually forces them to make money prescribing drugs (which falls under their jurisdiction). The result can be overprescribing. In Beijing, we were told, you can find people standing right outside hospitals, offering to buy drugs from patients.
We also heard from representatives of NGOs that there is widespread discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, especially migrants who leave their hometowns to look elsewhere for work. In the process, they lose their right to health care tied to their residency status. (Many of the NGOs we encountered get funding from Bill Gates' Seattle-based foundation.)
It's hard to tell in a short visit what really happens here, but most of these systemic problems were confirmed by China's Health Minister, Dr. Chen Zhu. Chen is not a member of the Communist Party, a rarity in top leadership circles, and he said he is committed to working on these issues.
It seems clear that the quality of health care in China can be excellent. The only question is: can you get it? It's a familiar question for Americans, too.
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