Today's China medical news headlines

More than half a billion Chinese have health cards. At the end of 2013, 540 million Chinese people, or roughly 40% of the population, had social security cards, which are mainly used to pay for medical expenses.It is hoped to expand numbers to 800 million cards by 2015, according to the Shanghai Daily.

Doctors in Beijing will be allowed to work in private hospitals as well as public ones under new regulations being drawn up by the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
At present doctors are restricted to working in only three local hospitals, according to China Daily. The city's health bureau says lifting the restrictions is aimed at encouraging doctors from top public hospitals to work in private medical institutions, attracting more patients to these institutions and thus alleviating the workload on large hospitals.

China may see human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 bird flu virus on a limited scale the WHO representative to the country has said. But there is no evidence that the virus will become sustained or widespread among humans, Bernhard Schwartlander said, according to the Beijing Daily.

"Since October, only one cluster was detected where human-to-human transmission might have occurred. We continue to expect only sporadic human cases," Mr Schwartlander said.


A Shanghai hospital has donated 'free' plastic surgery to a poor 16-year-old girl who survived the devastating Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. According to Shanghai Daily, the Shanghai Huamei Plastic Surgery Hospital gave Li Wenqian a free operation to separate her ring finger and little finger on her right hand, which had grown together after injuries she received when she was buried under debris for nearly 10 hours after the earthquake.

China is setting up a national health data network advisory group to make better use of population and public health information, CRI reports. A team of 28 experts from fields including medicine, demography, engineering, mathematics and law will provide suggestions for strategy, policy and planning based on population and public health data, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.



The New England Journal of Medicine is to expand its presence in China through the Wolters Kluwer publishing group and Ovid, according to a press release.