Epidemiology: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

I n the past three years, the Government of China initiated health reform with rural public health system construction to achieve equal access to public health services for rural residents. The study assessed trends of public health services accessibility in rural China from 2008 to 2010, and current situation about the China?s rural public health system performance. The data were collected from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2011, which used a multistage stratified random sampling method to select 12 counties and 118 villages from China. Data were disaggregated by provinces and by participants: Hypertension patients, children, elderly and women. China?s rural public health system did well in safe drinking water, children vaccinations and women hospital delivery. But more hypertension patients with low income could not receive regular healthcare from primary health institutions than those with middle and high income. In 2010, hypertension treatment rate of Qinghai in Western China was just 53.22% which was much lower than that of Zhejiang in Eastern China (97.27%). Meanwhile, low performance was showed in effectiveness of rural public health services. The rate of effective treatment for controlling their blood pressure within normal range was just 39.7%. The implementation of health reform since 2009 has led the public health development towards the right direction. Physical access to public health services had increased from 2008 to 2010. But, inter- and intra-regional inequalities in public health system coverage still exist. Strategies to improve the quality and equality of public health services in rural China need to be considered.

Biography

Miaomiao Tian has completed her PhD at the age of 26 and graduated from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2013. She is an Assistant Research Fellow of Center for Health Policy and Management, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Research interests are health policy and management especially in the primary health areas. She has published more than 15 papers in reputed journals and 4 are included in SCI.