China explores disease prevention options
Updated
Some answers on the question of how to close the health gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians may be about to come from an unusual source.
A new Australian-backed research centre's just been opened in Beijing, aimed at improving the health of rural chinese. If it's successful, the centre may yield new ways to improve health in the Australian bush too.
Presenter: Tom Iggulden
Speakers: Professor Stephen MacMahon, Principal Director, The George Institute; Dr John Yu, former Australian of the Year
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IGGULDEN: If there's a been a victim in China's move to a market-based economy, it's the country's sick. Until the '80s, millions of so-called barefoot doctors provided basic healthcare to China's rural poor. But now they're a thing of the past, squeezed out by the government's preference for a network of private sector clinics and hospitals. Most charge at levels comprable to western medical services, vastly more than most of China's 1.3 billion people can afford. Millions simply do without medical care at all, others put their families in debt for generations to cover the cost of treatment for common, preventable health problems like diabtetes and heart disease.
Dr John Yu is a former Australian of the Year now working to change China's health system.
YU: China has a much greater rate of acquiring billionaires than most other parts of the world but at the same time I don't think that one is seeing a comprable lifting of the healthcare standards of rural China and particularly Western China.
IGGULDEN: And why do you think that is?
YU: I suspect it's a little bit like Australia, there is no political clout that these people have and if they're not heard in that political sense, they don't get the support and resources they need.
IGGULDEN: Dr Yu's in Beijing to open the China International Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention, a partnership involving the George Insitute for International Health which he chairs. He says some of China's social policies are exacerbating its health crisis.
YU: I can understand why China had the one child policy but it does mean that two people are going to spend a large part of their life looking after four ageing parents. And if there is no social structure to help them look after those parents its going to be really very difficult.
IGGULDEN: Professor Stephen MacMahon is the The George Institute's principal director. He says though China recognises it's got a health crisis, changing course is difficult.
MACMAHON: Simply emphasising the number of deaths or people who are ill is not going to change policy. The big drivers of policy are cost. What will it cost the country if we have tens of millions of people disabled? What will it do to public security if there are unsustainable ill or disabled people in rural communities?
IGGULDEN: The new centre's partly funded by giant American health insurer United Health, hoping it can learn ways to lower health costs in the US. Professor MacMahon says some Australian communities may also benefit.
MACMAHON: What's happened in China over the last few decades is that the diseases that have killed the poor are exactly the same as the diseases that kill our indigenous populations and indeed kill many non indigenous Australians in remote areas. And we've struggled for decades to find solutions there and there is potential here to look at innovative ways that are effecitve and affordable then they will have relevance at home as well.
