World Health Day: Patients in China benefit from lower drug prices

World
Europe

01:20

This year's World Health Day campaign focuses on universal health coverage, and the WHO is working to ensure individuals across the world have access to the care they need. Now let's take a look at the new measures China has taken to provide better medical treatment and health care service to its people.

Beijing is eyeing speedier price cuts on rare-disease drugs. These diseases include Albinism and hemophilia. Since March, cuts of up to 3 percent have been made to value-added taxes for 21 imported rare-disease drugs and 4 active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Currently, more than 20 million patients could benefit from these changes.

VCG Photo

Another round of price cuts takes aim at cancer drugs.

Since last October, 17 cancer medicines have been covered on the medical insurance list. Prices of these drugs have been sharply down by over 56 percent on average. For example, a drug used to treat lung cancer, called Xalkori, has been reduced in price from over 50-thousand yuan per bottle to 15-thousand yuan per bottle.

If we look at the bigger picture, as of last year, China's Basic Medical Insurance covered over 1.3 billion people among both urban and rural residents that are nearly 98 percent of the country's whole population.

Meanwhile, the country is working to improve the quality of grass-roots public health facilities and private healthcare to make sure that patients can get treatments from their nearest hospitals.

VCG Photo

The establishment of China's "Internet Hospitals" is also in full swing. Through apps or video chats, patients can talk with well-known doctors from hospitals all over the nation, receive a treatment regimen and get treatment online.