Essential medicine policy in China: pros and cons

Figures & data

Table 1.  The number of drugs in essential medicine list in China.

Year	Chemical and biological medicines	Traditional Chinese medicines	Total
1982	278	–	278
1994	699	1699	2398
1997	740	1333	2073
2000	770	1249	2019
2002	759	1242	2001
2004	773	1260	2033
2009	205	102	307

Table 2.  The comparison of number of medicines in the reimbursement drug list between 2004 and 2009 in UEBMI.

Type of medicines	2009 version	2004 version	Number of increase	Increase rate (%)
Chemical and biological medicines	1164	1027	137	13.3
TCM	987	870	117	13.4
Total	2151	1891	260	13.7
Class A	349	296	53	17.9
Class B	1802	1595	207	13.0

Table 3.  The average price reduction of essential medicines after tendering (2010).

Provinces	Average price reduction (%)
Tianjin	10.3
Neimenggu	32.0
Zhejiang	32.0
Liaoning	34.3
Shanghai	39.0
Shaanxi	46.1
Jiangsu	47.7
Ningxia	49.2
Anhui	50.0
Hunan	53.2

Source: Hu3.

Table 4.  The evaluation of national essential medicine policy in China.

Indicators	2009	2010	2011
The proportion of government-run grassroots health institutions has conduct zero-mark-up policy in EM (%)	35.7	57.2	98.8
The proportion of village health posts has conduct zero-mark-up policy in EM (%)	0	0	41.5
The percentage of grassroots health institutions has received government financial subsidies (%)	30.9	53.2	90.8
The percentage of implementing comprehensive health reform in counties, districts and cities (%)*	0	0	95.8

Source: Health Statistics & Information Center, MOH.

*To implement the essential medicine system, comprehensive healthcare reform has been conducted in the field of personnel affairs, pricing, pay for performance, regulation, and supervision in grassroots health institutions.

Figure 1.  The number of essential medicines added in the provincial supplementary essential medicine list. Source: IBM.

Hu SL. Financing, pricing, and utilization of pharmaceuticals in China: the road to reform. China Health Policy Notes. The World Bank, Health, Population and Nutrition. East Asia and Pacific Region. Washington DC 20433 USA. 2010

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