Rural China: Part 8 – Investing in Health

In the eighth part of the Rural China series, China Daily reporter D J Clark visits the local doctors in Kengxi village who explain how the recent rural health insurance initiative have benefitted the local community. Back in 2005 medical insurance was predominantly for city dwellers, covering only about a quarter of China's population and 80% of all the medical facilities were based in urban areas. To offset this imbalance, China set out a five-year plan to rebuild the rural medical service system by supporting the construction of county-level hospitals, grassroots medical care institutions and village clinics. They also setup a new affordable rural healthcare insurance, all in all spending 1.13 trillion yuan over the last three years according to Vice Minister of Finance Wang Jun.