Michelle Lu, Public Health in China, Summer 2014
The last three weeks in Beijing have been eventful and fun! Last week, for our Public Health in China class, we visited a local CDC and hospital to learn more about the public health system in China.
Instead of having one central CDC like in the US, China has several levels of CDC: national, provincial, and local. Part of the reason is because China is so big, and when faced with an emergency outbreak, this system is faster at identifying the source of an outbreak. I thought this system would be very inefficient because of the lack of communication between so many different offices, but to my surprise, China has a fairly effective system in place. Every CDC is required to send updates and therefore the spread of different diseases can be tracked in real-time online. We visited the Xicheng CDC in Beijing and learned a lot about its day-to-day operations and some of the logistics of tracking a disease.
Here’s me all geared up and ready to collect samples for suspected respiratory diseases! Don’t I look dashing?
The day after, we also visited a local hospital in the Xicheng district of Beijing. The hospital itself was a lot smaller than I expected, but very well organized. I think the aspect that was most surprising for me was the inclusion of a whole ward for traditional Chinese medicine. Our presenter for the day emphasized the fact that patients in China have a lot more choice in their hospital care, which I found very interesting. Patients can choose their own physicians as well as choose between being treated with biomedicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), or a combination of the two.
The different choices available at the pharmacy incorporated into the Xicheng West Hospital:
