Two-child policy creates need for more pediatricians in China
Updated 11:01, 28-Jun-2018
[]

By CGTN's Ge Yunfei

A year ago, China formally introduced the two-child policy nationwide ending decades of the one-child rule. Since then, China welcomed around 8 million babies born as second children. But behind this modest baby boom is a shortage of pediatricians.
Huang Libin is a pediatrician at one of the largest hospitals in southern China, where there are less than 30 doctors serving the flood of parents and their children. 
At 9 o’clock in the morning, doctor Huang begins his rounds at the hospital's pediatrics department. It's a taxing job, but he can get off work only after midnight the next day.
“It’s very difficult to schedule work shifts, especially when female doctors are on maternity leave to have their second babies. A whole day's duty is from 8 a.m. to midnight the next day. We male doctors have to undergo 6 to 8 shifts like that every month,” said Huang Libing, Pediatrician of First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. 
In 2016, around 18 million babies were born in China, the highest number since 2000. And over 45 percent of those babies were the second children in their families.
China now has only 110,000 pediatricians. The country needs to triple that number to meet the current demand. That gap has made pediatrics an unattractive profession. 
Zhou Haibo is a deputy at the National People’s Congress and also the president of Qingyuan Municipal Hospital. He has been calling on the government to address the problem for years. 
“Now hospitals are all market-based and medicine sales are their main source of income. Medicines for children are cheaper than those for adults. So most hospitals are unwilling to develop this money-losing department, ” said Zhou Haibo. 
Zhou said the era of the second-child policy requires more measures to deal with the increase in the number of newborn babies, addressing the shortage of pediatricians is just one of them.