What India Can Learn From China's Health System?

Bangalore: China is experiencing a gigantic disease burden transition, with an extraordinary social and environmental change, reported the medical journal Lancet. The transition will not only affect the country's future but also shape the pattern of global health. Lancet wishes to act as a bridge in order to have a scientific exchange between the rapidly expanding arena of medical science in China and the rest of the world.

China's health services used to be described as too difficult to access, too expensive, and extremely variable in quality. But shockingly China has accomplished near universal coverage in a very short time. As per data from Chinese National Health Services Survey, the medical insurance coverage in China has increased from 29·7 percent in 2003, to 95·7 percent in 2011. But, the increased insurance coverage has not yet been effective in reducing patients' financial risks. Iin India, the number is very low and the health insurance market is very limited, covering only about 10 percent of the total population. It is seen that in India the total health expenditure is around 5 percent of GDP.

It is noted that reform of public hospitals is essential to control health expenditure because such institutes deliver more than 90 percent of the country's health services. There are pilot programmes for public hospital reforms in China.