BEIJING: As this year’s World Health Day falls on Friday under the theme of “Health for All,” China has been sparing no efforts in achieving that goal.
Over the past decades, the world has witnessed China’s accomplishments in building a healthy China. Average life expectancy, a key gauge of the health level of a country’s residents, has increased from 35 years in 1949 to 78.2 years in 2021 in China. Its basic medical insurance covers over 1.3 billion people. Severe infectious diseases, including smallpox, polio, and malaria, were eradicated in the country.
In the meantime, China has been sharing its public health successes with the globe, staying true to the initiative of building a global community of health for all.
For this year’s World Health Day, China set a domestic theme of “channeling quality medical resources down to the community level to ensure health for all,” aiming to facilitate people’s convenient access to health services.
Receiving medical services used to be difficult for many Chinese people living in isolated areas. “It’d take me a whole day to go to the county by boat and bus to see a doctor and return,” said Lin Zhongsu, an elderly citizen from a small island in east China’s Zhejiang Province. Things could not be more different now. At the medical facility on the island, a pair of glasses with 5G and AR technologies have enabled people like Lin to receive diagnosis and treatment from doctors based in big cities. –Agencies
