China Leading countries in terms of direct investments
Medium HALE and Life Expectancy
Low Gap between HALE and Life Expectancy
Final Longevity Progressiveness Ranking:#44
Final Longevity Progressiveness Score: 0.563
Practical Recommendation Summary: China faces many health challenges. А key component of healthcare should be the promotion of healthy lifestyles and physical fitness, including through the development of healthy cities, to ensure a greater focus on prevention rather than treatment. For greater reduction in infant mortality and rates of infectious diseases, government should invest in expanding health infrastructure, improvement quality of healthcare service and provision of affordable health care in rural areas across country.
Practical Recommendations (Full):
● A focus on national-level health status and its temporal trajectory. Health status is one of the most important indicators of well-being, and it predicts a large proportion of societal expenditures on health and social services for the elderly. Health status depends on individual lifestyle factors, social and community networks, general socioe-conomic, cultural and environmental conditions. Health status is also reciprocally affected by social and political policies and programs.
● Improve engagement of staff in healthcare. Though the government claims that there is basic insurance and treatments for 95% of the population are available, the real situation is the opposite. People find it difficult to receive the qualified treatments because of queries, waiting period and difficult system to sign up for a visit to a doctor. And this is in big cities where the huge public clinics have enough equipment, instruments and well-trained staff.
● Provide more freedom for private sector development. Private clinics can bring advanced methods and technologies in treatments, especially, foreign one by following the successful examples of the developed OECD countries that effectively tackle the burden of the noncommunicable diseases and provide the appropriate medications for elders.
● Health system re-orientation towards the changing epidemiological landscape. The increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases highlights the need to move from sick treatment to the prevention of chronic conditions. It requires patients’ participation and high health consciousness.
● Combat with undernourishment, poverty and socioeconomic inequality. Results of our study show an evident linkage of health and wealth. Healthy longevity in China should be started from the provision of basic services for all population, including adequate sanitation facilities, improved water sources, effective prevention and treatment. The focus also should be made on both the healthcare status of adults and children to create favourable conditions for the growth of future generations.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
● 95% of the population have insurance for at least basic health coverage that provides treatments on primary care for the population.
● The government claims that public insurance covers 70% of medicare that is a relatively good indicator for healthcare.
● In the then-impoverished country, the system contributed to a remarkable increase in life expectancy by more than 30 years since 1960 to reach 76.2 years in 2016.
● The infant mortality rate in China has fallen greatly, coming down to 18.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2018.
Weaknesses:
● The effectiveness of spending on health is low.
● Public health insurance covers only half of the costs of medication.
● Unaffordable healthcare: people with income lower than average do not afford treatment of serious chronic diseases.
● Shortage of healthcare specialist that cause long waiting periods and low quality of care delivery.
● Uneven distribution of hospitals and specialists - people in the remote area have no opportunity to cure serious diseases.
● The smoking rate is still high and stood at 24% in 2010, three percentage points higher than the OECD average of 21%.
Opportunities:
● Rapidly growing population’s wealth is driving overall health care market expansion.
● China is a major market for different multinational health companies.
● There is an overall tendency in the decrease in smoking rates among the world.
● A fast-growing economy that can learn from advanced countries’ healthcare systems and invest in the improvement of its own by the development of modern technologies and P4 medicine.
Threats:
● Environmental crises can be the reason for serious injuries, epidemics and diseases.
● The country has a large health care demand gap due to an ageing population, growing urbanization, proliferating lifestyle diseases.
● The obesity rates are rising and are more than in Japan and Korea.
● Continuing failures in the reforming of healthcare.
SWOT Conclusions
Strengths Analysis:
● Obesity is much lower than in other OECD countries. The World Health Organization estimated that 4.6% of men and 6.5% of women were obese in China in 2008.
● Healthcare expenditures in China are growing rapidly from year to year with the growth of income.
● The government became highly concerned about the healthcare system that resulted in the implementation the three types of insurances, two of them on a voluntary basis.
● The health status of the population has been improved for several past decades,
● Living standards and health status of the population have been significantly improved since the 1980s.
● From 1990 to 2000, infant mortality decreased from 65 to 31 per thousand live births, and maternal mortality decreased by nearly 50 per cent.
Weaknesses Analysis:
● With 1.6 physicians per 1000 population in 2012, China had much fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average (3.2 physicians).
● The economic success wasn’t mirrored on healthcare and such issues as longevity in particular.
● China’s spent on healthcare only 5.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 that is much lower as compared to OECD countries.
● The hospitals in China are prevalent in the urban area, in big cities and are very overcrowded, so rural population is left without an appropriate medical establishment and usually get impoverished by the payments for noncommunicable diseases treatment.
● The out-of-pocket cost issue is the most pressing, especially in rural areas.
● Noncommunicable diseases have become the major disease burden, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and schistosomiasis are still the major health problems in poor rural areas. The prevalence of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Low Gap between HALE and Life Expectancy
Final Longevity Progressiveness Ranking:#44
Final Longevity Progressiveness Score: 0.563
Practical Recommendation Summary: China faces many health challenges. А key component of healthcare should be the promotion of healthy lifestyles and physical fitness, including through the development of healthy cities, to ensure a greater focus on prevention rather than treatment. For greater reduction in infant mortality and rates of infectious diseases, government should invest in expanding health infrastructure, improvement quality of healthcare service and provision of affordable health care in rural areas across country.
Practical Recommendations (Full):
● A focus on national-level health status and its temporal trajectory. Health status is one of the most important indicators of well-being, and it predicts a large proportion of societal expenditures on health and social services for the elderly. Health status depends on individual lifestyle factors, social and community networks, general socioe-conomic, cultural and environmental conditions. Health status is also reciprocally affected by social and political policies and programs.
● Improve engagement of staff in healthcare. Though the government claims that there is basic insurance and treatments for 95% of the population are available, the real situation is the opposite. People find it difficult to receive the qualified treatments because of queries, waiting period and difficult system to sign up for a visit to a doctor. And this is in big cities where the huge public clinics have enough equipment, instruments and well-trained staff.
● Provide more freedom for private sector development. Private clinics can bring advanced methods and technologies in treatments, especially, foreign one by following the successful examples of the developed OECD countries that effectively tackle the burden of the noncommunicable diseases and provide the appropriate medications for elders.
● Health system re-orientation towards the changing epidemiological landscape. The increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases highlights the need to move from sick treatment to the prevention of chronic conditions. It requires patients’ participation and high health consciousness.
● Combat with undernourishment, poverty and socioeconomic inequality. Results of our study show an evident linkage of health and wealth. Healthy longevity in China should be started from the provision of basic services for all population, including adequate sanitation facilities, improved water sources, effective prevention and treatment. The focus also should be made on both the healthcare status of adults and children to create favourable conditions for the growth of future generations.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
● 95% of the population have insurance for at least basic health coverage that provides treatments on primary care for the population.
● The government claims that public insurance covers 70% of medicare that is a relatively good indicator for healthcare.
● In the then-impoverished country, the system contributed to a remarkable increase in life expectancy by more than 30 years since 1960 to reach 76.2 years in 2016.
● The infant mortality rate in China has fallen greatly, coming down to 18.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2018.
Weaknesses:
● The effectiveness of spending on health is low.
● Public health insurance covers only half of the costs of medication.
● Unaffordable healthcare: people with income lower than average do not afford treatment of serious chronic diseases.
● Shortage of healthcare specialist that cause long waiting periods and low quality of care delivery.
● Uneven distribution of hospitals and specialists - people in the remote area have no opportunity to cure serious diseases.
● The smoking rate is still high and stood at 24% in 2010, three percentage points higher than the OECD average of 21%.
Opportunities:
● Rapidly growing population’s wealth is driving overall health care market expansion.
● China is a major market for different multinational health companies.
● There is an overall tendency in the decrease in smoking rates among the world.
● A fast-growing economy that can learn from advanced countries’ healthcare systems and invest in the improvement of its own by the development of modern technologies and P4 medicine.
Threats:
● Environmental crises can be the reason for serious injuries, epidemics and diseases.
● The country has a large health care demand gap due to an ageing population, growing urbanization, proliferating lifestyle diseases.
● The obesity rates are rising and are more than in Japan and Korea.
● Continuing failures in the reforming of healthcare.
SWOT Conclusions
Strengths Analysis:
● Obesity is much lower than in other OECD countries. The World Health Organization estimated that 4.6% of men and 6.5% of women were obese in China in 2008.
● Healthcare expenditures in China are growing rapidly from year to year with the growth of income.
● The government became highly concerned about the healthcare system that resulted in the implementation the three types of insurances, two of them on a voluntary basis.
● The health status of the population has been improved for several past decades,
● Living standards and health status of the population have been significantly improved since the 1980s.
● From 1990 to 2000, infant mortality decreased from 65 to 31 per thousand live births, and maternal mortality decreased by nearly 50 per cent.
Weaknesses Analysis:
● With 1.6 physicians per 1000 population in 2012, China had much fewer doctors per capita than the OECD average (3.2 physicians).
● The economic success wasn’t mirrored on healthcare and such issues as longevity in particular.
● China’s spent on healthcare only 5.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 that is much lower as compared to OECD countries.
● The hospitals in China are prevalent in the urban area, in big cities and are very overcrowded, so rural population is left without an appropriate medical establishment and usually get impoverished by the payments for noncommunicable diseases treatment.
● The out-of-pocket cost issue is the most pressing, especially in rural areas.
● Noncommunicable diseases have become the major disease burden, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and schistosomiasis are still the major health problems in poor rural areas. The prevalence of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.