BEIJING, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- In the hinterlands of southwest China's Guizhou Province, a 71-year-old lady surnamed Xu had long believed that her lumbar-intervertebral disc-related illness could only be cured at a top-notch hospital.
She didn't anticipate that seasoned doctors from the prosperous Zhejiang Province would perform a minimally invasive surgery for her at a local hospital. The operation was a success, and she was able to leave the hospital on her own two feet within just five days.
Under the country's regional medical center program, the Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital and the people's hospital of Bijie City in Guizhou have cooperated in building the Bijie Hospital, Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital since 2022.
A total of 20 medics from the Zhejiang hospital have participated in the development of three medical centers and five clinical disciplines for the Bijie Hospital.
Zhang Jun, administrative president of the Bijie Hospital, pledged efforts to build the hospital into one that is equal in competence to that of the Zhejiang hospital.
Making quality medical services easily accessible to a vast population remains an uphill challenge for the world, to which China must respond.
China has rolled out a raft of measures to tackle the issue of uneven and insufficient distribution of medical resources, with the regional medical center program being one of them.
China has so far approved 125 regional medical centers under the program. It covers all provincial-level regions with inadequate medical resources, said an official with the National Health Commission (NHC).
Since the inception of the program, more than 1,400 diagnostic and treatment technologies have been introduced into the less-developed regions. And these regions have seen a marked decline in the number of people going to other provinces to seek medical attention, the official added.
Meanwhile, the country is also working to boost community-level medical centers, which totaled nearly 980,000 with over 4.55 million medics by the end of 2022, according to official statistics.
Initiatives have been implemented to make more quality medical resources readily available, particularly at the community level, and to ensure that they are more evenly distributed among regions.
In Sanming City, east China's Fujian Province, local authorities have encouraged doctors at top-tier hospitals to work for primary-level health centers for a period of time.
More approaches will be taken to improve community-level medical services in the country, including training more general practitioners for community-level medical centers, another NHC official said. ■
