Shanghai sets goals for health

It's getting better all the time and by 2030 Shanghai knows where it wants to be with regards to the health of its citizens.

Shanghai will enhance work to curb pollution problems and have good air quality in at least 80 percent of days in 2030 as part of its efforts to promote public health, Vice Mayor Weng Tiehui said on Wednesday.

She was outlining the city's latest plan on health.

Under the Shanghai Health 2030 plan, more sport facilities will be built with the aim of increasing the portion of people who do physical exercise regularly to 46 percent from 40 percent now.

The plan covers various factors that can influence people’s well-being and integrates health into all related policies, including those to do with the environment, education and sport, to build up a comprehensive system for public health service and management.

A total of 23 indexes are used to set goals for the city, such as keeping the average life expectancy at the level of developed countries. The average life expectancy in Shanghai was 83.18 last year, very close to 84 in Japan, the highest in the world.

The indexes included 10 newly created ones, such as "healthy life expectancy" and the rate of how quickly common cancers are diagnosed at an early stage.

The plan says that the average healthy life expectancy should reach 70 by 2020 and above 72 by 2030.

It also aims at bringing the rate of diagnosing common cancers at an early stage to more than 30 percent by 2020 and above 40 percent by 2030.

“Early diagnosis is very important for cancer patients,” said Weng. “It decides the recovery chances and life quality.”

As the ways people live and act accounted for 60 percent of the factors that have an influence on health, the city will also promote a healthy life style, including diet, physical exercise, not smoking and drinking less alcohol, as well as maintaining a psychological balance. It will also enhance education in schools about healthy life styles for children.

It will also make sport a priority to promote the physique of residents, utilizing waterfronts, parks, forest belts and green land. More sport facilities will be built to enable everyone to reach one within 15 minutes.

By 2020, the city will finish construction of 23 city-level sport centers, 50 exercise centers, 150 multiple-function sport fields, 100 football pitches and 300 kilometers of paths for walking and jogging, according to the plan.

It also aims at increasing the average sport space for citizens to 2.8 square meters from 1.76 now, and the ratio of regular exercisers from 40 percent to 46 percent by 2030.

Traditional Chinese medicine will play a bigger role in disease prevention, treatment and recovery.

“We will enhance integrated innovation combining medical industry with elderly care, tourism, Internet, sport and food industries, and accelerate development of health service with traditional Chinese medicine and industry of leisure health sports,” said Weng.

Shanghai will also promote health related scientific and technological innovation. The plan says the city will convert major hospitals into global treatment centers for  difficult and complicated diseases, as well as centers for medical technological innovation and standard training bases for medical talent.