China helping build a shared, healthy future

During the past four decades, China has achieved remarkable socioeconomic growth. It has become the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fastest-growing major economy. Average life expectancy is 76.3 years. The maternal mortality rate has dropped to 20.1 per 100,000, and the infant mortality rate has been cut to 8.1 per 1,000 in 2015. China also realized universal health coverage in 2011 through the establishment of the free national essential public health services package, financial assistance programs for the poor, and social health insurance systems for employees, urban and rural residents, and civil servants.

China has emerged as a strong and more confident player in the global health arena. In the 1950s, China had already started to provide health assistance to Mongolia by building a tuberculosis sanatorium. Chinese medical teams were dispatched to more than 50 countries all around Africa, Asia, the Pacific islands, South America and Mediterranean countries.

China never stopped exploring the most appropriate ways of "teaching to fish" rather than "giving the fish" as part of its south-to-south health cooperation. This cooperation continues to expand, with activities including dispatching medical teams, building hospitals and other health facilities, and donating medical devices and drugs. China also cooperates to promote human resource capability in health, provide human public health assistance and emergency response capabilities. Chinese experts do short-term surgical tours in developing countries.

For example, Chinese assistance and emergency response against the 2014 Ebola outbreak gained global praise. China cooperates with the African Union and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention to build African disease control centers.

During the High-Level Roundtable on South-South Cooperation, China committed to build 100 hospitals and clinics. In just the last three years, China has demonstrated its willingness to shoulder more international responsibilities under the China-Africa Public Health Cooperation Plan, which was proposed at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Other health cooperation initiatives and actions were kicked off under BRICS, China-ASEAN, China-CEEC, APEC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

China has also confronted challenges about how to improve development cooperation effectiveness. The values and principles underlying the transition from aid effectiveness to development cooperation effectiveness are coherent with that of South-South Cooperation - both emphasize "enabling" the partner countries through an equitable development cooperation pathway.

First, China developed its very first Global Health Strategy in 2017, providing a general guide for future engagement in global health governance and assistance issues.

Second, early this year a subcommittee for health under the Inter-Ministerial Coordination Mechanism for China's foreign aid was established, led by the Ministry of Commerce and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, which will help to develop, deliver and supervise the health cooperation projects in a more systematic, sustainable and accountable way.

Third, pilot projects aim to improve the self-development capacity of partner countries. For example, more than 20 hospitals from China and African countries have formed cooperation relationships to develop clinical departments, including intensive medicine centers, cardiovascular centers, minimally invasive treatment centers, pediatrics centers, and so forth.

The goal is to achieve three changes:

--To move from "in-kind assistance" to "function assistance" to enable partner countries to improve their clinical and management capacities;

--To move from "project assistance" to "program assistance", thus enhancing the harmonization of multiple health assistance efforts into an entire well-designed program to address one or two major challenges in their health system development;

--To move from an approach dominated by official assistance to a combination approach with civil society and private investment. The last change can be witnessed in the China-Africa Public Health Cooperation Plan, which responds to the African countries' demands for pharmaceutical industry cooperation, so as to help achieve localized drug production and distribution.

Also, under the Belt and Road Initiative, a more inclusive global way for China and partner countries to cooperate in global health is being developed. Belt and Road Health Cooperation was first proposed by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce in March 2015.

Respecting, protecting and promoting the human right to health is the underlying value for Belt and Road Health Cooperation. The goal is to improve the health of China and the world by alleviating inequity and harmonizing the development of health with the economy, society and environment. Last August, the Beijing Communique of the Belt and Road Health Cooperation and the Health Silk Road High Level Meeting called for deepening cooperation on joint prevention and control against disease and health risks to protect global health security; strengthening policy dialogue to link health development strategies; facilitating innovative cooperation to share health public goods; and promoting mutual learning to deepen people-to-people exchanges.

China believes we can build a shared, healthy future only through equitable, open, all-around and innovation-driven development cooperation.

The author is associate researcher and deputy director of the Department of Global Health Research, China National Health Development Research Center.