A young female caretaker attends to an old lady at an elder care facility in Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, on Friday. Photo: VCG

China's average life expectancy has reached 78.6 years, the maternal mortality ratio has dropped to 15.1 per 100,000 and the infant mortality ratio has dropped to 4.5 per 1,000. These achievements are the best on record, according to the National Health Commission of China (NHC) in a Thursday announcement. 

The national health authority on Thursday released the 2023 statistical bulletin on the development of the country's health service. The statistics show that the health level of the people has continued to improve, and high-quality development of health care industry has made new progress, the authority confirmed. 

The bulletin shows that as of the end of 2023, the total number of medical and health institutions nationwide was 1,070,785, an increase of 37,867 from the previous year, including 38,355 hospitals, an increase of 1,379 from the previous year. The total number of hospital beds nationwide was 10.174 million, an increase of 424,000 from the previous year. In 2023, there were 7.23 beds per 1,000 people in medical and health institutions.

The total number of health technical personnel nationwide was 12.488 million, an increase of 830,000 from the previous year, including 7.723 million health technical personnel in hospitals. 

The bulletin points out that the volume and efficiency of medical services have increased in parallel. In 2023, the total number of medical consultations and treatments in medical and health institutions nationwide was 9.55 billion, an increase of 1.13 billion from the previous year, with an average of 6.8 visits to medical and health institutions per resident. Combined, there were over 301 million admissions recorded, an increase of 55.011 million from the previous year. 

The preliminary calculation of the total health expenditure in China in 2023 stood at over 9 trillion yuan ($1.27 trillion), with government health expenditure accounting for 26.7 percent, social health expenditure accounting for 46 percent, and personal health expenditure accounting for 27.3 percent. The per capita total health expenditure was 6,425.3 yuan, and the health expenditure accounted for 7.2 percent of GDP.

In 2023, the total number of consultations and treatments in traditional Chinese medicine was reported at 1.54 billion, an increase of 310 million from the previous year.

Global Times