Improving medical and health services: Excerpt from China's Foreign Aid (2014)

Medical and health care is a major field where China directs its foreign assistance. From 2010 to 2012, China helped recipient countries improve their medical and health services, raise their disease control and prevention ability, and enhance their public health capacity by constructing hospitals, providing medicine and medical equipment, dispatching medical teams, training medical workers and conducting exchanges and cooperation on disease prevention and treatment with other developing countries.

Constructing medical facilities and providing free medical equipment. China assisted about 80 construction projects of medical facilities, including general hospitals, mobile hospitals, health centers, specialist clinics, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) centers, which have effectively alleviated the shortage of medical and health facilities in recipient countries. Moreover, China provided them with about 120 batches of medical equipment and medicine, including color Doppler ultrasound machines, CT scanners, automatic biochemical analyzers, maternal and infant monitors, critical surgical instruments, ICU monitors, and MRI scanners as well as drugs against diseases such as malaria and cholera.

Dispatching medical teams. China dispatched 55 medical teams with 3,600 medical workers to nearly 120 medical centers in recipient countries. They trained tens of thousands of local medical staff, which has relieved to a certain extent the shortage of medical services in recipient countries. The training was carried out through demonstrations, lectures, technical courses and academic exchanges, covering such topics as the prevention and treatment of malaria, AIDS, schistosomiasis and other infectious diseases, patient care, the treatment of diabetes and rheumatism, as well as the TCM of acupuncture application, naprapathy, health care methods and Chinese medicines. From 2010 to 2012, more than 100 Chinese medical workers were conferred medals by the recipient countries for their outstanding contributions.

Carrying out Brightness Trip activities. Brightness Trip program was actively carried out in both governmental and non-governmental channels to help other developing countries in the treatment of eye diseases. From 2003, China started to send medical teams to provide free surgery for patients with eye diseases in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan and other Asian countries. In November 2010, a Chinese Brightness Trip medical team arrived in Africa for the first time and carried out operations for over 1,000 cataract patients in countries including Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Sudan.

Assisting the prevention and control of infectious diseases. From 2010 to 2012, China provided 60 batches of antimalarial medicine, H1N1 influenza vaccine and cholera vaccine free of charge to other developing countries and held training in the prevention and control of infectious diseases, the expenditure for this purpose accumulating to RMB200 million. In 2007, China and the Comoros launched a cooperation program of treating malaria with an artemisinin compound, an effective antimalarial drug, which helped the Comorian island of Moheli reduce its incidence of malaria by 90%. From 2010 to 2012, while making further progress in Moheli, China started promoting the program on the Comorian island of Anjoyan.