Great lessons learned over three decades

They have created opportunities for britain in China's health field

When Kenneth Clarke first went to China as Britain's health secretary in the 1980s he saw the very basic provisions in China's healthcare system.

"Back then, China was a developing country," says Clarke, now a minister without portfolio but who still takes a keen interest in Britain's healthcare.

"I was taken around to see the healthcare facilities. They were interesting, but not up to the standards I would expect the NHS to be."

He recalls seeing overcrowding in one hospital and staff struggling to cope. It made him feel "at least we are doing better than this", he says.

Thirty years later things have changed greatly. China's rapid economic growth has spawned demand for better healthcare, and that has created opportunities for Britain to export its products and services.

To better capture this opportunity, Clarke led a healthcare delegation with more than 50 business and healthcare professionals that visited Tianjin, Nanjing, Zhejiang and Shanghai in January.

Clarke says it was the largest delegation he has taken overseas, and demonstrates the enthusiasm Britain's healthcare sector has for China.

"Because China has newly become an economic power, its health system isn't up to speed with the UK's National Health Service."

That has been in place for decades, and when it was set up Britain was prosperous compared with China later on, he says.

Clarke says his observations tell him a key challenge in China is the lack of primary care, so patients go to hospitals for treatment directly, unlike in Britain, where general practitioners act as gatekeepers for larger hospitals.

The provision of primary care is an area in which China could draw lessons from Britain because patients would feel more relaxed when treatment is done outside a hospital, and this also leads to less demand for hospital services, he says.

"There is a tendency for people to think about healthcare as totally consumed with hospitals, with big machines and cancer. Whereas you would know from your ordinary life, the spectrum of health needs is absolutely enormous. And the pattern of a good family doctor providing treatment outside hospital is the pattern you want."

To help share such expertise with Chinese partners, some of those who were in Clarke's delegation have been in talks with the governments of Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. He hopes these will turn into more formal relationships in which British providers will be contracted to offer advice.

Such knowledge sharing will also help build a long-term relationship that could help more British healthcare firms and organizations find their way into the Chinese healthcare procurement system, he says.

Clarke says another key area in which Britain and China can work together is old-age care, because both economies face a growing aging population.

"The aging population is a big problem in the UK. The biggest thing going on in the British healthcare system is the development of a pattern of service allowing people to grow old with as much dignity as they can."

Exporting healthcare expertise will be crucial for the British economy, especially during the current economic climate, as it "contributes to the restoration of normal economic growth", he says.

(China Daily European Weekly 04/25/2014 page16)