People's Daily:
This year marks the final year for China to achieve its goal of eradicating poverty. Raising standards of health is an important way of lifting people out of poverty. What specific measures has China taken in terms of alleviating poverty by improving health standards? Thank you.
Yu Xuejun:
I will answer this question. We all know that poverty alleviation is one of the three critical battles. Reducing poverty by improving health standards is a key to winning the battle against poverty. The goal becomes more harder to achieve the closer we get to it. The NHC regards reducing poverty by improving health standards as an important foundation for our implementation of the healthy China initiative and the rural revitalization strategy, an important task in the reform and development of health care, and an important means to address areas of weakness. Focusing on the goal of ensuring basic medical care for the poor, we have introduced and implemented targeted policies to achieve the goal of ensuring the poor population are covered by the health care system and have access to doctors and hospitals.
First, we have emphasized improving the capacity of medical and health services in poor areas. Addressing the problem of no medical or health institutions and personnel in rural poor areas, township and administrative village is a historical achievement. We have worked to ensure that every poverty-stricken county has at least one public hospital, and every township and administrative village has at least one health center and clinic equipped with qualified doctors. Grade-III hospitals were paired-up with hospitals in poverty-stricken counties to provide assistance. Major headway has been made in promoting the capacity building of county-level hospitals, the construction of the "county and township integration, township and village integration mechanism, and the construction of rural health care institutions.
Second, we have made up for the shortcomings of public health services. We have promoted the comprehensive prevention and control of infectious diseases and endemic diseases. Efforts to promote the comprehensive prevention and control of major infectious diseases and endemic diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and echinococcosis, have delivered historic results. The health standards of people living in impoverished areas have also significantly improved. Together with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), we have successively issued technical guidelines for the construction of adaptable and convertible wards, fever clinics, and laboratories of medical and health institutions in general hospitals that can cope with an epidemic. All projects in poverty-stricken areas that meet the necessary requirements have been included in the scope of financial support from the central government.
Third, we have effectively ensured that the poor population has access to basic medical and health services. A condition-specific and category-based approach has been applied to the medical treatment of patients. Adopting this approach, we have treated more than 19 million poor patients and continued to provide health services for key groups. We have worked to ensure that all poor people in need can be relocated, covered by health care and receive treatment. For registered poor households, the proportion of out-of-pocket payments of health care expenses has been reduced to about 10%. We have established a monitoring and early warning mechanism that can timely locate people in need, give targeted treatment, follow up and effectively ensure their health, and prevent them from falling into poverty or returning to poverty due to illness. As I just mentioned, we have successfully lifted nearly 10 million impoverished households, who fell into or returned to poverty due to illness, out of poverty.
Next, the NHC will continue to summarize these successful experiences and help fight the poverty alleviation battle by improving people's standard of health. At the same time, we will establish a long-term mechanism that can address both the symptoms and root causes with long-term and short-term plans, in order to ensure that when we achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and that no group of people is left behind because of health issues. Thank you.
