Chronic Disease (Photo credit: tamahaji)
China Daily: “Increase in cases of chronic diseases can mean opportunities for medical firms
Deng Jianping currently spends around 500 yuan ($79) a month on medicine for blood pressure, diabetes and coronary heart disease.
The 68-year-old Beijinger said his wife has more chronic diseases and her medication costs even more, while his two sons, 42 and 38, also need to take medicine every day for hypertension and heart illness.
Wang and his family are among the more than 260 million Chinese people, around a quarter of the nation’s population, who have been diagnosed with chronic diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases.
The Ministry of Health said that around 10 million people in China have contracted chronic diseases every year since 2002.
“Prevention and control of chronic diseases will be one of the seven top tasks of China’s medical care reform by 2020,” said Health Minister Chen Zhu.
The central government will invest a total of 400 billion yuan by 2020 in the seven key projects, which also involve improvements to the grassroots healthcare system, psychological disease prevention, the construction of a digital public health information network, medical device innovation, the development of traditional Chinese medicine, and the training of general practitioners.
According to the ministry, 85 percent of deaths in China are caused by chronic diseases, with expenditure on the treatment of these accounting for 69 percent of China’s total healthcare costs last year.
Foreign pharmaceutical companies have an advantage in this sector, according to Song Yingtong, a senior analyst at Beijing Chnmed Consulting Co Ltd, a domestic pharmaceutical consulting firm.
“They have accumulated rich experience in chronic disease treatment in developed markets,” he said.”
via Healthcare system to get 400b yuan injection |Hot Issues |chinadaily.com.cn.
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