Primary care system failure adds to flu chaos

The flu outbreak this winter has been severer with more cases being reported than previous years, sparking a public outcry over the weak primary care system in the country. Large hospitals in most Chinese cities, especially in North China, were overflowing with patients showing flu-like symptoms - and that many of them were later diagnosed to be suffering from just common cold showed they could have been treated by primary care facilities instead of visiting large hospitals.

The situation is worse in pediatric departments of hospitals, which in general are short-staffed. Last week, a large Tianjin hospital temporarily shut down its pediatric department because the pediatricians were either too exhausted to work after handling an overwhelmingly high number of patients or had fallen ill themselves.

In China, people prefer visiting large hospitals for treatment without referral from primary care facilities. This somewhat neutralizes the effectiveness of primary care centers, which are supposed to play the role of "gatekeepers". In a large developing country providing universal healthcare, it also inflates the insurance cost.