Jane Duckett: "Rural areas still struggle to provide basic health care"

November 22, 2018In the past 15 years, China has made considerable progress in setting up a comprehensive health care system. Today, over 92 percent of Chinese have basic health insurance. But huge challenges remain notably in rural areas. While people in urban centers often have access to modern facilities and well-trained doctors, rural residents still struggle to get basic care such as vaccines, says Jane Duckett, a health care specialist from the University of Glasgow and co-editor of a new MERICS report on social development in China. One of the big issues is “training the right kind of health care workers to deliver primary care,“ says Duckett in the latest MERICS Experts Podcast.