Shanghai uses less investment to achieve great results in health care

The average lifespan of Shanghai residents has increased from 72.77 years old to 83.37 years old in the past 40 years thanks to improvements in health care and medical capabilities in line with the nation’s reform and opening-up, officials from the city's health commission said.

The mortality rate of pregnant women is 3.01 in every 100,000, and that of infants is 3.71 per 1,000.

All three statistics are in line with developed countries and regions, and have been the top in China for over 10 years.

“To achieve this goal, the city government and health authorities have spent great effort to meet people’s rising demands for health services,” said Wu Jinglei, director of Shanghai Health Commission. “We created a health group system, which consists of a leading hospital and several grassroots hospitals for better health resource sharing and use, a general physician system which encourage people to visit grassroots hospitals for common and chronic diseases, reformed resident training, and perfected disease prevention and control networks.”

The investment of health care of Shanghai in 2016 was 5.65 percent of GDP, while health costs per person was US$990 on average.

“The investment of developed countries and regions is usually 10 to 12 percent of local GDP and the average cost per person is US$4,000 to $5,000,” said Jin Chunlin, director of Shanghai Health Development Research Center. “Which means Shanghai used much less investment in health but achieved similar results as developed countries and regions.”