What expat nurses tell us about China's healthcare system

by Michael Woodhead
A survey of Chinese-trained nurses working in Australia has revealed some interesting insights into the role of nurses in the Chinese healthcare system. 

Three main themes emerge from the interviews with 28 Chinese nurses working in Australia carried out by Zhou Yunxian from the Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou. In Australia, Chinese nurses found they had more independence and responsibility than they did under China's more regimented and hierarchical hospital system. Chinese nurses said they felt uneasy about having to take the initiative in patient care rather than be given orders by a senior nurse or doctor.
"Generally speaking, nurses here are more independent. They don’t rely on doctors totally. They can have their own thoughts and make decisions on the caring of patients," said one nurse.

Demarcation of roles is obviously stronger in the Chinese system - the nurses working in Australia found it strange that there was open communication and equality between nurses and doctors in a western healthcare system. "I don’t know what they (local colleagues) are doing, chatting with doctors – a waste of time from my perspective," said one, who believed that nurses should concentrate on 'nurses work' and not get involved with doctors.

Another theme that emerged was around the role of the nurse and their scope of practice. In China, nurses often saw themselves more as clerks and technicians fixing up IV lines rather than patient-oriented 'hands on' nurses. Chinese nurses were horrified to find that in Australian hospitals they were expected to do 'dirty' manual work such as bathing patients or helping to feed them. "I feel too embarrassed to tell people (the fact)…If I tell my family that a nurse in Australia needs to shower the patient, I think even my family would find it very hard to accept," said one.

 This revealed that in China, manual work in hospitals is done by unqualified low-status 'care assistants', and personal help with feeding, toileting and bedding is the responsibility of the patient's family, not the nursing staff. Nurses from China also found it hard to adjust to the notion of a family leaving the care of a relative to 'the system' rather than taking personal responsibility - especially with the elderly and the way they are left in nursing homes.

A third theme that emerged was communication. In China, nurses expected to be given clear instructions about tasks from superiors, however they did not feel any obligation to communicate with patients or their families. Chinese nurses were surprised to find that in western hospitals, nurses were expected to be friendly and personal with patients, who they regarded as strangers. "Here every nurse calls everyone 'sweetie', 'love', things like that. It is totally different from us… I have never thought of addressing a patient so intimately. It is hard for us because we don’t feel this way," said one nurse.

Language and cultural differences also meant that Chinese nurses found their usual 'direct' style of communication appeared rude and imperious to westerners. They found it hard to be 'warm' and polite, believing this to be insincere. In contrast, Chinese nurses expected that their colleagues would become their workmates and were disappointed to find that westerners were out of the door at 5pm and not interested in networking. "Anyway, they (local colleagues) come when they are on duty and they leave when they finish the shift. In China, we are colleagues even after the work. We go out together, and then we become very good friends."

Although designed to investigate the problems of Chinese nurses adjusting to the western workplace, the study highlights many of the assumptions that underpin the Chinese health system

Medical comic strips | Anti-smoking laws weakened | No support for Orphan Diseases

A female doctor in Shanghai draws weekly comic strips and posts them on WeChat to try demystify medical jargon and improve doctor-patient relations
Dr Chen Haiyan, a cardiac ultrasonographer at the Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital has used the comic strips to explain conditions such as heart defects and high blood pressure in easy-to-understand ways. She also tries to explain the daily life of medical staff and show they are human in an effort to defuse the major tensions that have triggered many recent violent attacks against hospital staff.

Health experts have expressed disappointment that Beijing's proposed anti-smoking regulations have been watered down. The latest draft legislation only bans smoking in "shared indoor public places," compared to a previous draft that banned smoking in all indoor public areas, said Professor
Wang Qingbin, a legal expert at the China University of Political Science and Law,
"By banning smoking only in 'shared' indoor public areas, the legislators are giving officials with their own offices a chance to smoke, which is against the spirit of equality," Wang said, adding that it will only make law enforcement all the more difficult.

China lacks adequate health systems to deal with rare 'orphan' diseases such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, medical experts say. At a recent conference on rare diseases at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University experts called for legislation and policies on the prevention and treatment of rare diseases that affect more than 10 million people in China."Related regulations should be created to help provide better support to patients with rare diseases and their families," said Li Dingguo, chairman of the rare disease branch of the Shanghai Medical Association.

Intern scheme concerns | Telehealth ban sparks backlash | Rural residents too poor to pay for care

Internship scheme will create bottlenecks and headaches
Doctor training moves to a three-year internship system next year but many medics believe the changes will leave hospitals with even worse staffing shortages. The new system which will see newly-graduated doctors rotate through various hospital departments to gain experience is intended to bring China into line with other countries and to create a uniform high standard of medical practitioners. However, critics warn that the additional three years of being a trainee will mean that doctors earn very little and the low income will deter many from entering the medical profession. Another drawback of the new system is that doctors will serve as interns in tertiary 'teaching hospitals' and will then refuse to be 'downgraded' to work in smaller local country and township hospitals.

Ban on telehealth consultations triggers backlash
There has been a major backlash against an announcement that doctors will be banned from conducting online consultations by the National Health and Family Planning Commissioning. The NHFPC said this week that 'remote' consultations are illegal except through accredited medical institutions because all doctor consultations need to be carried out according to the regulations of the NHFPC as currently laid down for hospitals and clinics. The NHFPC said remote consultations should be viewed as no different to any other kind of consultation and therefore all the usual regulations on medical practice apply. However, after a major backlash from health groups and online health providers such as www.haodf.com, the NHFPC said it would look again at the legislation and would 'listen to the opinion of the masses' in interpreting the legislation.

Rural health insurance not working
People who live in remote rural areas of China are so poor they cannot afford to seek medical attention when they are sick,  a study from Hebei has found. More than 50% of people living in the Dabie mountain areas of Hebei said they would not seek medical care if they felt unwell. The main reason (for 38% of people) was financial difficulty. Other reasons included inconvenience and preference to self medicate. Researcher Dr Fang Pengqian and colleagues from the Tongji Medical College, Wuhan said the findings suggested that the universal health coverage from the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was was not working for people in poorer highland areas. They said the locals could not afford to pay the necessary insurance premiums to  cover basic care and the low reimbursement meant they faced high out-of-pocket costs.

Doctors lose, retail pharmacies win as government cuts the hospital monopoly on dispensing

by Michael Woodhead
The Chinese government appears to have side-stepped the influential doctors' lobby and the tame health ministry by using the Ministry of Commerce to tackle the perennial problem of drug sales commissions and the inflated cost of medicines.

Doctors in China rely for much of their income on commissions and bonuses from sales of pharmaceuticals, and previous efforts to curtail the profits have been stymied by medical lobby groups. The Ministry of Health, previously led by a medic Dr Chen Zhu (who now heads the Chinese Medical Association), has managed to block or delay previous efforts to tackle the drug commissions problem.

Now the government has turned to the Ministry of Commerce to introduce new rules that separate medical services and drug sales in 34 pilot cities across the country, in an attempt to lower the high cost of medicines. The National Health and Family Planning Commission (which absorbed the Ministry of Health last year) has been sidelined by the move, a sign that its own efforts at reform have failed.

Under the new Ministry of Commerce plan, major city pharmacies will replace hospital pharmacies as the source of prescription drug dispensing, putting an end to the lucrative 'gold mine' of revenue for hospitals. In theory, this will mean that hospitals should no longer pressure their doctors to prescribe more and reach quotas to boost revenue via the hospital pharmacies. And by breaking the hospital pharmacy monopoly, the new plan will lower drug prices by encouraging competition between pharmacies.

According to Caixin, previous efforts to break the drug sales-hospital income link have failed because of entrenched opposition from the former Ministry of Health. The ministry pushed a plan under which local governments purchased pharmaceuticals on behalf of local hospitals, but this scheme was ineffective in breaking the stranglehold of hospitals on drug demand and also proved to be yet another channel for corruption.

 The new scheme will also permit more pharmacies to become eligible for reimbursement under the various medical insurance system. These moves will further increase diversity and competition and give pharmacies a boost in business, commentators say. However there has been no analysis of how public hospitals will make up for the huge gap in revenue when their lucrative pharmaceutical monopoly is snatched from them.

Robot surgery for Chengdu | Aussies help with primary care | Weibo cancer medical fee man dies

Robotic surgery is now being used by hospitals in China, with the da Vinci surgery robot system completing its first operation at the Provincial People's Hospital in Chengdu. The 30 million yuan ($5 million) system can perform accurate and less invasive surgery in cases such as prostate cancer and gallbladder procedures but has been criticised by some clinicians as being an expensive system with a steep learning curve that does not offer any real improvements in outcomes compared to conventional surgery.

China is turning to Australia for advice and training in how to expand its primary health system. The National health and Family Planing Commission has asked Melbourne-based Professor Shane Thomas of Monash University to help guide the pilot programs of primary care taking place in Shenzhen. Monash is also hosting 24 Chinese health managers who are attending a leadership-training program at the School of Primary Health Care.

A Chinese man with cancer who became famous for using Weibo to solicit donations for his medical bills has died. Noodle shop owner Li Gang of Zhengzhou raised $16,000 to pay for medical treatment which he could not afford in 2012. His message went viral and he had many visitors to his noodle shop, but some commentators said it highlighted the lack of affordable medical care for most Chinese people with cancer.

Medical accidents kill more people than traffic accidents

by Michael Woodhead
In China there are about 8 million unnatural deaths every years and of these about 400,000 are said to be due to medical accidents - often due to unsafe use of medicines. To try and remedy this poor situation, September has been nominated as national medication safety month by the China State Food and Drug Administration.

According to pharmacist Zhang Jichun of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, this high rate of accidents and adverse reactions with medications is due to widespread ignorance in the population about appropriate use of medical drugs. A recent survey of more than one million Chinese found that only about one in ten could answer correctly questions about basic drug safe use.

The higher error rate with drug misuse included allergic reactions to antibiotics in babies and infants, misuse of drugs by pregnant women causing birth defects and adverse birth outcomes, accidental drug overdoses, misuse of sleeping tablets causing accidents, using drugs past their shelf life, taking multiple drugs and causing interactions, abuse of weight loss drugs causing cardiac problems and deaths and failing to use cardiac drugs in sufficient doses leading to heart attacks and strokes.

The survey found that there were many problems with the way Chinese people used medications. About 90% bought prescription drugs from pharmacies and self-treated without getting advice or a diagnosis from a doctor. Almost 70% did not read the package insert and a third made major mistakes in dosing while 25% did not take the medicine correctly and failed o get the expected benefit.

 Zhang Jichun said many of the problems with drugs occurred in children and the elderly, who were more susceptible to their effects. A typical and common avoidable serious problem was deafness seen in 300,000 children due to overuse of some classes of antibiotics. This side effect occurred due to parental medication without being aware of the risks.

In the elderly one of the main problems was excessive medication, he added. Many elderly people take several different drugs for various ailments without understanding that they can interact to cause severe side effects, he said. Elderly people also made the mistake of taking western medicines with Chinese traditional medications, and this could also cause problems he said.

To try address this problem the China Pharmaceutical Association has set up a "medication safety expert advice hotline” and invites all Chinese to seek advice before using medications.

How many hours a week do Chinese doctors work? Too many.

After featuring many articles from the Lancet's China-themed issue it is only right that I give some attention to an article published by their competitor, the BMJ.

This week a blog post from four Chinese doctors lamenting the long hours they have to work. According to the lead author, Dr Luo Deng (an endocrinologist at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital) China's doctors work an average of 11 hours a day, six days a week. That's an average - not the maximum. And before you jump in and say that many doctors in other countries work those long hours - remember that Chinese doctors earn about $5000 a year.

The working hours figure comes from a survey of more than 3771 Chinese doctors, which found that 80.5% worked more than eight hours in hospital every day. The exact figures were an average of 11.22 hours per day for 5.62 days a week, with only one day off.

"On top of this, we fear that the increasing number of daily hospital outpatient visits, along with administrative or academic affairs, may further contribute to the imbalance between family and career in doctors’ lives," the doctors write.

The doctors blame the heavy workload on a huge increase in patient consultations in the last decade - up from from 1.21 billion in 2001 to 2.74 billion in 2013. During that time, hospital admissions increased nearly fourfold, but the Chinese government still spends only about 5% of its GDP on health, compared to 8.8% for Brazil and 9.2% for South Africa.

"With a generally high patient to physician ratio in most practices, and near constant patient contact throughout the workday, most physicians find it difficult to take even a short break. Even the public of China has begun to raise concerns about the physical and mental health of physicians; however, these issues probably remain unknown to much of the world," the Chinese doctors write.

They suggest, quite meekly, that the government implement "effective and efficient measures  ... to improve the health of China’s medical staff, and boost their career enthusiasm amid the stressful job atmosphere."

Smoking cessation prospects poor | Bleak outlook for foreign-owned hospitals | 500 children die of rabies every year

Smoking cessation efforts are doomed to fail in rural China unless the culture of  giving cigarettes as gifts can be broken, say researchers from the Ministry of Health in Jinan, Shandong. Their study found that although many people in rural China attempted to quit at the advice of other family members, relapses were common and few were able to quit completely because they were culturally expected to share cigarettes. The study also found that village doctors did not smoking cessation advice to all patients and there were few if any smoking cessation programs in rural areas.

Allowing foreign companies to set up and operate hospitals in China will not make much difference to overstretched health services, a leading health official says in Caxin. Lian Xinbo says the real barriers are in employment and insurance regulations which mean that foreign companies will find it difficult to attract talented doctors and also to offer services that are reimbursed by health insurers.

More than 500 Chinese children die of rabies every year, and tragically most of the deaths could have been avoided if children had received correct treatment, say clinicians from the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing. Most of the rabies cases occur in rural areas and are due to bites by domestic or stray dogs. However, few children with rabies get the recommended treatment of post-exposure rabies injections or even adequate wound care.

Medical schools in China: outdated and unpopular

Some insider views of the Chinese medical education system have been published as part of The Lancet special China-themed issue this week. The rather gloomy conclusion is that China's vast medical education system is failing to attract good students and failing to produce graduates who are able and willing to work as doctors.

A review article notes that China made some major reforms to medical education in 1998, greatly expanding the number of students to produce half a million would-be doctors a year. However, many of these medical graduates do not enter medicine but take up other careers. Why is this? The review authors say there "is a mismatch of health professional education and employment opportunities".

Another article in the same issue of the Lancet throws further light on the lack of enthusiasm for medicine as a career: Dr Yang Pengfei of the Changhai Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, says most doctors now advise their children against taking up a career in medicine and only 7% would recommend it. He cites the breakdown in trust and respect between patients and doctors and the tide of violence against medical staff - 30 killings in recent years by disgruntled patients and their families. Dr Yang notes that even the best medical schools such as Peking Union Medical College are now struggling to attract high quality students.

"The national admission score for a graduate student majoring in medicine has also declined for three consecutive years, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is no longer the best students who go to medical school. This is a growing concern: who will be tomorrow's doctors?" he asks.

The review article says the problem of poor relations between patients and doctors is due in part to the narrow and inflexible education system that fails to instil students with the values, ethos, and ethics of the medical profession and also fails to produce doctors with good communication skills and characteristics such as empathy.

"The curriculum system still focuses narrowly on biomedicine, medical technology, and clinical practice. Pedagogic methods are rigid: mostly teacher-controlled didactic lecturing, which requires rote memorisation by students. The increase of disputes between doctors and patients, and violence against doctors in China might be associated with these deficiencies in education," it says.

Another problem with medical education in China is that it is still rigidly hospital focused and geared towards producing narrow specialists rather than generalists who can work in the community or in rural health.

"Therefore, it is not surprising that the graduates have limited knowledge about primary care services and prevention of diseases."

Will things improve in the near future? It's hard to see how, as huge class sizes are a barrier to more innovative teaching methods such as problem-based learning, and encouraging interaction and discussion.

China's medical schools may need to take a leaf from the book of China's factories. Instead of mass producing unpopular low quality products they could adapt the best foreign know-how and methods through joint ventures to produce a wider range of higher quality sought-after products.

Schistosomiasis eradication at snail's pace | Medical guinea pigs paid 10,000 yuan | DXY gets $70 million investment boost

Eradication of schistosomiasis in China is being hindered by factors such as lack of political and financial support, praziquantel resistance and climate change, say clinicians from the Jiangsu Institute of Parasitical Diseases in Wuxi. A sense of complacency has set in since the  prevalence of schistosomiasis was reduced to about 1% in animals and humans, they say. Renewed efforts are needed to ensure the final elimination of the parasite by 2020 and avoid its re-emergence, they say.

Young Chinese are signing up to be human guinea pigs in pharmaceutical drug tests and trials, being paid up to 10,000 yuan to be injected with experimental drugs. Medical students are the most popular choice for the first human trials of the 10,000 different trials run by China's 6,000 pharmaceutical firm.

China's leading medical social network site DXY has received $70 million in investment funding from Tencent, which will start to use the doctor networks as part of its services to consumers in the form of online consultations and appointment booking services. DXY will also develop new products in the healthcare area for consumers as well as doctors.

Chinese prefer foreign brands - especially when it comes to medical journals

One of the more provocative articles in the China-themed Lancet this week is a brief letter from two orthopaedic surgeons in Xian. 

Dr Yang Junsong and Dr Hao Dingjun complain about the quality of medical journals in China and how Chinese clinicians invariably prefer to be published in foreign medical journals. This is because of the publish-for-promotion phenomenon which I touched on last week - to gain promotion in a Chinese hospital, a doctor needs to acquire a list of published research, and the greater the Impact Factor of the journal the better.

As Drs Yang and Hao remark, there has been a tidal wave of medical journal articles published by Chinese clinicians in recent years, and yet medical publishing is in crisis. Why? Because most of it is crap. Scholarly articles are not being published to to be read or to further scientific knowledge, but to be listed and to obtain the magic piece of paper that counts towards career advancement.

Well, you might say, this sort of things happens to all academics and clinicians  and you'd be right. But the scale of the problem in China - and the sheer numbers involved - means this is distorting medical publishing and also drowning out the genuine research and academic discussion that deserves to be published but which struggles to reach the most suitable audience.

Another problem noted by the doctors from the Medical College of Xi'an Jiaotong University is that most doctors in China don't read English language journals. They may only have access to Chinese language journals and these are poor in quality because they being neglected by Chinese researchers - and they are also often profit seeking rather than having any sense of collegiality. As the authors note, Chinese doctors deal with 4 billion patient consults a year and they depend on Chinese medical journals as their main source of medical information - if this is rubbish, where can they get good quality research,  evidence and discussion from to inform their practice?

"Rebuilding a scientific and reasonable assessment system for medical research would be an essential step for the Chinese government," the authors conclude.

This isn't the first complaint about medical publishing in China. The Economist touched on the  problem of poor quality - and sometimes fake - medical research publications last year. Other bloggers have also highlighted the bizarre practice of bonuses paid to researchers in China in proportion to the impact factor of journals they get published in: $300 for a low impact journal, and the jackpot of $30,000 for getting a paper in Science or Nature! This reminds me of Chiang Kai Shek's system or rewarding his air force pilots with dollar bonuses for every enemy aeroplane they shot down.

I can only agree with this article by a frustrated academic: "We must stop the avalanche of low quality research..."

China's move to promote private hospitals means health system will go from bad to worse: experts

In a scathing critique in the Lancet's special China-themed issue, health economists from Oxford and Harvard say that the Xi Jinping government's recent swing to favouring private sector involvement in the health system will be a retrograde step with 'dismal' consequences for health in China.

Professor Winnie Yip and Professor William Hsiao say the new target of giving private hospitals a 20% market share by 2015 is misguided and will promote wasteful and inequitable care. And most importantly, it will do little to improve China's already rotten public hospital system, which suffers from the worst of both words - state-controlled but with a user-pays private model of financing.

Their conclusion is that if the private hospital system continues: "population health outcomes would suffer; health-care expenditures would escalate, with patients bearing increasing costs; and a two-tiered system would emerge in which access and quality of care are decided by ability to pay."

They say China made a good start to health reform with the landmark 2009 decision to introduce universal and affordable public health insurance cover for both rural and urban residents. However they warn that the limited improvements achieved so far will be negated if the privatisation of an already profit-driven public hospital sector goes ahead.

The article is worth reading for its detailed dissection of the ills of the current hospital system, in which state-owned institutions are driven to maximise revenue by overservicing on unnecessary prescribing, tests and procedures. This sentence sums it up:

"Because physician staff are the residual claimants of profits in public hospitals, they are de facto shareholders of the public hospitals. Hence, public hospitals have neither the motivation nor the incentive to integrate care with primary health-care providers or make treatment decisions based on cost-effectiveness or population health maximisation criteria."

They warn that adding private hospitals into this already toxic situation will create even more problems as state-owned for-profit hospitals enter a "medical arms race" with private hospitals to provide more services at higher cost to patients - especially as private hospitals are already being planned by pharma companies and medical device companies.

"Overall, our assessment suggests that China's prospect of provision of affordable and equitable access to health care with a primary health-care-centred integrated delivery model approach would be relatively dismal. The for-profit motive of large public hospitals would result in escalation of health-care cost, inefficient use of pharmaceutical and high-tech diagnostic tests, and an absence of incentives for public hospitals to integrate care with primary health-care facilities. Entrance of private investment will further exacerbate these trends."

The Lancet devotes an issue to China

The Lancet this week has China has its theme, and includes many interesting articles on a wide range of topics around medicine and health in China. 

There's a huge amount of material there and I don't really know where to start in reporting it all. The articles cover everything from China's medical education system, the challenge of non-communicable diseases and even a couple of clinical research articles on pulse oximetry for screening newborns for cardiac disease. For me, the most interesting article is one on the recent change of course in China's health reforms to put emphasis on private hospitals. The authors of the review, from Oxford and Harvard universities, say this move is a retrograde and negative step that will run counter to many of the other recent reforms that aim to encourage equity and more efficiency in China's user-pays hospital based system.

The Lancet also includes several articles on the theme of preventing chronic diseases such as obesity - a very timely issue as China becomes more wealthy and starts to see the same lifestyle diseases such as diabetes that are already so common in more developed countries.

For me the other interesting section in this China-themed Lancet is the letters page. There are several letters from doctors in China commending the journal for highlighting the problem of violence against medical staff in China - and all put the blame on the underfunded health system and overworked doctors. On a related theme, doctors in China also lament the drop-off in applications for medical school - few young Chinese want to become doctors these days, as it is seen as a difficult and dangerous job that requires many years of study for little reward.

And any coverage of the medical situation China would not be complete without comment on the difficult status of organ transplantation. Quite a few doctors take issue with a recent Lancet article claiming that 'a new era' in organ donation is about to begin. They point out that China has about 200,000 require an organ transplant but there are only about 2000 donors. Read the full article to find out why.

My only criticism of the Lancet China issue is the too-deferential interview with China's health minister Li Bin, who gets to trot out all the claims of progress with reforms, without really being challenged about the many problems and contradictions with them. Oh, and the omission of any coverage of primary care [or lack thereof] in China ...

In China's hospitals, one in three doctors have latent tuberculosis infection

by Michael Woodhead
It's an avoidable occupational hazard that Chinese doctors could well do without: tuberculosis. 

A  study carried out in a general hospital in Henan has found that one in three healthcare staff have latent tuberculosis infection. The figures are even worse for a nearby infectious diseases hospital where almost 60% of doctors had latent tuberculosis infection.

First some clarification: as the CDC points out:

Persons with latent TB infection do not feel sick and do not have any symptoms. They are
infected with M. tuberculosis, but do not have TB disease. The only sign of TB infection is a
positive reaction to the tuberculin skin test or TB blood test. Persons with latent TB infection
are not infectious and cannot spread TB infection to others. Overall, without treatment, about 5 to 10% of infected persons will develop TB disease at some time in their lives.

So, people with latent TB do not pose a serious risk to patients, but they themselves face a high risk of developing active tuberculosis disease.

In the study of 712 healthcare workers at a 1600-bed general hospital and a 600-bed infectious diseases hospital in Zhengzhou, researchers found that the tuberculin skin test-positive prevalence was 34% in the general hospital and 58% in the infectious disease hospital.

Dr Zhou Feng and colleagues who did the study said that health staff faced high risks of tuberculosis if they worked with infected people, such as those with HIV who often have co-infection with tuberculosis. Rates of infection were also highest in staff with longer years of working in the hospitals, presumably due to greater duration of exposure to risk.

Writing in PLOS One they said many staff did not use personal protective equipment such as  face masks and N95 respirators when working with infectious patients, despite this being recommended in guidelines.

Another problem with detecting and treating tuberculosis in healthcare workers was the low rate of tuberculin skin testing for the infection: many healthcare workers refused testing, and the most effective testing kits were too expensive for many Chinese hospitals. The findings also highlighted the limitations of the regular chest X-rays used to screen workers for active tuberculosis disease.

As the authors conclude - more emphasis is needed on observing and adhering to basic infection control and prevention practices in Chinese hospitals:

"Comprehensive guidelines should be developed for different types of medical institutions to reduce tuberculosis transmission and ensure the health of healthcare workers," they suggest.

What the Chinese can learn from Tibetans about hypertension

by Michael Woodhead
I've always wondered why Tibetans could be so healthy when they seem to subsist on a diet composed of dairy and meat, perhaps with the odd potato thrown on the fire. 

One of the staples of the Tibetan diet is tsampa - the butter 'tea' which is more like a salty yak butter tea-milkshake. This is not your EasyWay shake - tsampa is made with barley and is often accompanied by a glob of fermented yak milk sometimes known as kurut - similar to the products seen in Xinjiang.

Now it seems there is a hidden healthy component of Tibetan dairy products that has powerful antihypertensive properties, as strong as the drugs prescribed by western cardiologists. The blood pressure lowering effects come from the fermented milks produced by 259 Lactobacillus helveticus - a kind of probiotic ACE inhibitor if you like. Something in the Lactobacillus has potent effects on Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE), the same system that is the target of modern antihypertensives such as enalapril.

In a recent study conducted by dairy technologists at the Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Huhho, the fermented milk product was found to contain antihypertensive peptides that lower blood pressure by about 12 mmHg for six to 12 hours. That is fairly impressive BP lowering - and would be useful in a typical hypertensive patient with a systolic BP of 140/95mmHg who wanted to get to a target of 120mmHg.

As well as keeping Tibetans healthy, Dr Chen Yongfu and colleagues say the newly-identified probiotic/peptide may have potential as "a valuable resource for future development of functional foods for hypertension management."

Beijing introduces private health insurance for primary care

by Michael Woodhead
Beijing has introduced a pilot scheme of private health insurance to cover primary care services such as child health checks, maternal and perinatal care, postoperative rehabilitation and elderly care.
The service, which will be available through 23 community health centres allows those with insurance cover to tailor the type and level of services to suit their family needs.
The program is being offered online through the "Beijing General Practitioner and Family Care Reform Portal" website. The project has been set up jointly by the Beijing Medical Association and  China Life insurance
According to the BMA's Dr Wu Yonghao, Beijing residents will be able to purchase "Community Care Insurance" that will entitle them to various services provided by family doctors.
The service will also be offered as an add-on for patients who have insurance cover for procedures such as surgery, cardiac interventional procedures, orthopedic surgery and childbirth. General practitioners will provide the community care, including assessment, counselling, referrals and follow-up.
Insurance will also allow consumers to gain access to health checks, fast track referrals and personalised care.
The first of the "Family e-sites" is expected to go live in October and cover six districts of the city. By 2016 it is expected that 23 community health centres will cover all districts  of Beijing. Dr Wu said all community GPs will be qualified practitioners with at least five years experience as a specialist in the public system.
The program combines two of the National Health and Family Planning  Committee's health reform priorities: a move to private health provision and the development of primary care and community care services.

Why Chinese patients are turning against their doctors: contrasting articles by the New Yorker and BMJ

by Michael Woodhead
Two very interesting and very different articles this week on violence against doctors in China: one in the New Yorker and another in the form of a study in the BMJ Open. 

The New Yorker story is in the usual stylish narrative, but I prefer the BMJ Open article, because it has more facts and more insights, even if it is a dry scientific paper. In the New Yorker, writer Chris Beam uses the example of the murder of a doctor in Harbin to shine some light on the whole fraught situation of violence against doctors in China. The story focuses on the case of a young man from a small town who had debilitating and degenerative back pain (ankylosing spondylitis) and who was unable to get satisfactory treatment from a Harbin hospital. He also had TB, which made treatment with an immunosuppressive drug even more difficult. Frustrated at his patchy and expensive treatment, the young man returned to the hospital and attacked the first doctor he could find, and killed an 'innocent' medical practitioner who had nothing to do with his care.

Chris Beam tells the story well and uses it to give some background on the health system in China and why so many patients and their families turn violent when they are treated so badly. However, I found the article was a bit too focused on the legal side of things (the American obsession with law once again?) The article doesn't really explore the root causes of violence: the built-in pressure in the system to overprescribe and over service, the rising cost of treatment and the hugely overloaded hospital system. Beam does cover China's health reforms, but strangely fails to mention the recent moves to encourage private clinics and the use of primary care clinics.

Another factor not really touched on by the New Yorker article is the patient/family faults: for me some of the key factors in China's medical disputes are rising expectations combined with ignorance (poor health literacy) and readiness to use brute force. This is not just confined to health: see how Chinese travellers behave when flights are cancelled or hotel rooms are overbooked.

That's why I prefer the BMJ Open article by Dr Jiang Yishi and colleagues at the School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai. Their article takes a look at the reality of the complaints systems that exist in Chinese hospitals - and finds them sadly wanting. Dr Jiang and colleagues undertook the first in-depth study of how the complaints system works for patients and for doctors and hospital staff. They conducted interviews with all 'stakeholders' and found that in many cases, the system is broken. In theory, a patient with a grievance has several channels through which they can seek redress. They can make a formal complaint to the hospital complaints office and can also petition via a system of 'letters and visits'. Patients can also go to mediation by a third party office to settle an unresolved dispute with a hospitals. And patients can also take legal action against a hospital via  a lawsuit.

In practice, these systems often do not work. Firstly, many patients are simply unaware of the complaints system and how to use it. Hospitals don't advertise their complaints offices, which are often hidden away in an obscure corner of the building. The staff in these offices are supposed to be able to investigate complaints and arrange mediation - but in practice they are often unqualified to adjudicate on complicated clinical matters, and they are also under great pressure to deflect complaints - or dismiss them quickly. Complaints departments are understaffed and have little sway in the hospital system. Another problem with the 'complaints office' system is that it lacks transparency. Patients make complaints but they get little feedback from complaints office staff who do everything 'behind closed doors'.

On the other hand, hospitals and medical staff also express great frustration about the complaints system. Doctors say any complaints arise because they work under great pressure to see 60 or more patients in a morning and don't have time to put on a 'warm face' or to explain things in detail to patients. This lack of connection and communication leads to many misunderstandings and unhappy patients.  Doctors also say that they become the scapegoat for failings of the system: for example, (just as in the US) they are restricted in what treatments they can offer to patients by the medical insurance rules - but patients don't understand this and often get angry at being denied treatments are given treatments that come with a hefty out of pocket costs.

Another big frustration for doctors and hospitals is the rise in unreasonable complaints and the use of abuse and pressure (extortion) to get a complaint resolved with financial compensation. More than 50 doctors interviewed mentioned this 'chao' (吵, argue) phenomenon. Doctors said many patients and relatives had unrealistic expectations about what could be done by medical staff. And when things didn't have a good outcome, patients and relatives often turned to threats and 'mob tactics' to put pressure on doctors and hospitals. These unruly groups are not interested in facts or a fair settlement but want to cause as much trouble as is needed to get a financial payout.

The BMJ Open article says the whole health complaints system in China is lacking in structure and rigour: there are no standard protocols for investigating complaints, for assessing harm and no data is collected on complaint numbers or how they are followed up - and no system for using complaints to identify weaknesses or errors and give feedback accordingly. Hospitals have no incentive to collect or document complaints because it just gives them more 'black marks'. 

The overall impression of the health complaints system is that it is perfunctory and ineffective: hospital directors want complaints to be managed quickly and made to 'go away', hence the readiness to make a quick financial settlement and avoid trouble and bad publicity, especially when angry mobs are involved.

The article by Jiang concludes by identifying three crucial areas where improvement is needed in the complaints system: organisational support, personal support from hospital managers and political leaders (and patients) - and learning system to ensure that failures are identified and rectified. The solutions put forward are sensible and obvious - and the full paper is well worth a read. 

However, I  would not be optimistic about the prospects for change: many of the problems that plague the health complaints system are common to those of Chinese society in general: there is a lack of trust in institutions (in this case hospitals and health departments) which are not accountable, lack transparency and which combine vested financial interest with political power. The solutions require open-ness, accountability and an independent watchdog with teeth. In the current environment in China, those are not likely to happen. Instead, China has top-down directives to crack down on the symptoms of these failings - the government issues stern warnings and makes some highly public arrests of wrongdoers. Ultimately it will take workable systems to fix the problems of health grievances, not campaigns and punishments.

Nearly 700 dead in Yunnan rabies epidemic - mass culling of dogs needed to stop spread to Lijiang and Dali

by Michael Woodhead
Yunnan is in the midst of a rabies crisis and drastic action is needed to curb the disease in dogs before it spreads to popular tourist towns such as Lijiang and Dali, Chinese researchers say

In the year 2000 there were only three cases of rabies in the whole of Yunnan, but in the following decade there was an epidemic of the disease and 663 people died. The explosion in rabies cases has mostly affected eastern parts of the province adjacent to Guizhou and Sichuan, and the rabies cases are linked to increasing ownership of dogs in rural areas - and better transport links.

In a report published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases this week, researchers from the Yunnan Institute of Endemic Diseases Control and Prevention say a mass culling of dogs in the province is urgently needed to curb the ongoing spread of rabies. They say many rural households have dogs that are apparently healthy but harbouring and spreading rabies. Vaccination is not practical for the tens of thousands of poorly supervised dogs in rural towns and villages, and therefore culling is the only realistic option, they say.

In their article they says that rabies had been all but eliminated from Yunnan by the late 1990s after serious outbreaks in the 1980s. In the year 2000 there were just 3 cases in one county, but since then the disease has spread to 77 counties within the province and the epidemic shows no sign of abating. The problems has become so bad that Yunnan is now the focal point for the spread of rabies not just within China but also for neighbouring counties such as Laos and Burma, they claim.

Rural families often own two to three dogs and there is little legislation to enforce vaccination, they note. In addition, better road links and increased ownership of vans and cars means that dogs are now traded over a much wider area and they are also sold to restaurants for dog meat.

They propose a four point plan for the most severely affected regions of Yunnan, which include Wenshan, Zhaotong, Qujing, and Honghe counties.

1 Domestic dogs should be confined in the household at all times.
2. All unsupervised dogs and domestic dogs within the affected villages to be killed.
3. Vaccination of all  dogs in neighboring villages as an emergency and temporary measure.
4. Provide free rabies vaccination to all susceptible people and educate local inhabitants regarding the
risk of rabies.

If these measures are not adopted immediately, rabies can be expected to spread to the tourists towns of Lijiang and Dali, they warn. In the longer term, compulsory vaccination programs for all dogs will be needed to curb rabies. However, they are pessimistic about the prospects for such a campaign.

"The greatest obstacle to removing the threat of rabies is the low level of political commitment because dogs are not regarded as economically useful animals in Yunnan Province," they conclude.

Hunan: 200 hospital staff strike and stage protest over attack

by Michael Woodhead
More than 200 hospital staff staged a sudden strike and protest at the Yueyang Second Hospital after medical staff were attacked, held hostage and forced to kneel in front of the body of a patient.

The incident arose after a young man was brought into the hospital emergency department on August 20th with stab wounds. The patient, a 31-year old male called Chen Qiming, was critically ill and did not survive for long. After his death, dozens of relatives of the dead man came into the hospital and created havoc, seizing and beating medical staff and forcing them to kneel in front of the body of their dead relative in the mortuary. The family members also ran riot in the hospital, smashing up offices and blocking entrances, disrupting normal working of the hospital for eight hours.

The next morning hospital staff said they would refuse to work until those responsible for the attacks had been brought to justice and they were provided with adequate safety protection in the workplace.
They carried placards saying "Expecting fairness, give us respect". The protest attracted a large crowd of onlookers, and the strikers said they demanded that their legal rights be respected.

A staff member at the hospital said the mood of staff was indignant and emotional.  Hospital managers had advised them not to stage a protest but to instead take their grievances to the local government office. However, the staff opted for a spontaneous strike and could not be blocked.

Doctors said the dead man had suffered critical injuries including deep penetrating knife wounds to the chest that caused heavy blood loss and which were not survivable. They had done everything they could to save him when he was brought into the hospital, but despite their best efforts the man died.
When the staff were attacked many other staff members including doctors and ambulance drivers came to their help, and police were called. However, despite trying to mediate, the more than 150 police were unable to settle the situation for eight hours.

A spokesman for the Yueyang City Health Bureau said an investigation had been launched into the incident. Local police said they were also investigating the incident but had not yet contacted the families said to have been involved in the attacks.

According to sources at the hospital this is the second violent attack on staff this year and the third violent medical dispute in Hunan in in the last two months.

How an uneducated migrant worker became a successful medical journal editor: the publish-for-promotion swindle

 by Michael Woodhead
An amazing and hilarious story in the Chinese Legal Daily this week about how a rural migrant came to Beijing and set up a fake medical journal to publish scholarly articles for senior doctors wanting to boost their promotion prospects.

The young man ran a highly successful publishing operation and made almost two million yuan ($325,000) between 2009 and 2013 when his operation was busted by police. The man called Liu Yang was only 23 years old when he came to Beijing and started working on the reception desk of a hotel in 2009. It was while he was talking to a doctor at the hotel that he hit on his money-spinning idea. The doctor was complaining about how difficult it was to get promotion because of the requirement to have a quota of articles published in medical journals. The problem, he said, was simply that there were too many doctors trying to get published and not enough journals.

Liu Yang had the obvious idea of inventing a medical journal to meet that demand. Despite having only a middle school education and knowing nothing about medicine, he quit his job at the hotel and borrowed  money to buy some basic publishing equipment such as a scanner and large printer. He installed this at his apartment, which would become his editorial office. However, his most important investment was 200 yuan for copies of the leading medical journals, whose style he copied. He also bought a list of top doctors and top hospitals around China.

Awarding himself a doctorate and appointing himself editor and publisher, Liu Yang then wrote to the hospitals on his list and offered the services of his medical journal for publishing. He was immediately inundated with manuscripts from mid-career doctors. As a police investigator later explained to the reporter, the medical career pathway in China is based on publication of scholarly articles for advancement. Promotion from hospital resident onwards is dependent on having a list of articles that have been published in journals. No publication, no promotion.

"Dr" Liu Yang received so many submissions he was rushed off his feet publishing his journals every month, and soon had to call in his wife and other family members to help out. The journals were only circulated to the doctors who had articles published in them. It was essentially vanity publishing. And yet, to maintain some credibility, Liu Yang even started to reject some manuscripts. The fake journal published articles from doctors all over China: the most frequent users were doctors seeking elevation to 'deputy director of department' level, a career step which required many published articles.

At first, the fake journal was a print operation, but doctors then started asking 'Editor' Liu Yang why their articles were not being published online. The fake editor then expanded his shanzai operation online and hired a web designer to copy the website  of a leading medical journal and set up a website for his own fake journal. Now Liu Yang offered digital journal publishing to his hundreds of clients.
In total he published articles by more than 800 doctors, and most were senior doctors at major hospitals, including military hospitals. Most did not realise the journal was a fake operation. A few suspected things were not quite above board, but still paid Liu Yang to publish their efforts because they believed others would not notice.

And for four years they didn't. As a police investigator remarked, there are hundreds of such medical articles and theses published every year and nobody is much interested in what they say - they are simply published to impress hospital administrators. And so until recently nobody was auditing these medical articles or the journals that published them.

However, somebody must have eventually twigged to Liu Yang's ruse. In September 2013 police came calling at the new expanded Chaoyang offices that Liu Yang had expanded into. As cops banged on the door, his wife tried to throw plastic bags of money out of the window, whereas Liu was more interested in trying to save the raw materials for his publishing operation. The police gained entry to the premises and shut down the publishing business, confiscating equipment and 600,000 yuan. Liu Yang and his wife were arrested by police and charged with fraud.

Commenting on the case, a senior doctor at a Beijing Hospital said the fake journal saga highlighted a major fault of the medical career system in China, namely the reliance on having papers published. The doctor said there was enormous pressure on doctors to publish, because promotion offered higher income through access to prescribing a wider variety of drugs. Doctors who were good clinicians but did not publish remained stuck on the lower rung of the hospital ranking and only treated large numbers of patients. Some hospitals even fined their doctors if they did not achieve a quota of published article, he said. And the doctor said the busted operation was not the only fake journal -  he still regularly received emails from dubious sources offering journal publishing services and also ghostwriting services.

Liu Yang's fake publishing operation is now smashed, but the publish-for-promotion system is still intact in China. And while doctors are under enormous pressure to publish, other loopholes will be exploited, corners cut and more scams like those of Liu Yang can be expected to occur.