Urban health facilities evaluated in new report

Chinese eastern and southern cities perform better than those in other parts of the country in public health and supporting facilities, while cities with more than 3 million permanent residents are better compared with those with lower populations, according to a report released by Tsinghua University on Monday.

Jointly released by the Tsinghua's Institute for China Sustainable Urbanization and Wanke School of Public Health and Institute for Health China, the report provides suggestions to city planners and policy-makers based on evaluations of core public health facilities and supporting health facilities in more than 80 cities nationwide.

Li Bo, senior researcher at Tsinghua's Institute for China Sustainable Urbanization and a member of the report team, said health facilities covered in the report include traditional medical services as well as nursing homes, psychological services, emergency refuge, sports facilities and green transportation.

Shenzhen of Guangdong province tops the list of urban public health facilities, followed by Hangzhou, Jinhua and Ningbo of Zhejiang province as well as Erdos of the Inner Mongolia autonoumous region.

However, the report found most of the cities surveyed need to improve coverage of supporting facilities like nursing homes and psychological services, especially in northeastern and western parts of the country, while cities with higher coverage need to get accessible facilities within one kilometer of residential populations.

The report will focus on some index with Chinese characteristics like share bicycles and traditional Chinese medicine service in future investigations.