China registers falling maternal, infant mortality rates in 2020

BEIJING -- China's nationwide maternal and infant mortality rates, two key indicators of a country's public health standard, continued to fall in 2020, according to a newly-released annual report.

Respectively, the maternal mortality rate decreased to 16.9 per 100,000 in 2020 from 17.8 per 100,000 in 2019, while the infant mortality fell to 5.4 per 1,000 in 2020 from 5.6 per 1,000 in 2019, said the report issued by the National Health Commission.

The two indicators' further decrease owes to China's ever-improving healthcare service system over the past years, the report added.

The report also showed that by the end of 2020, China saw over 1.02 million medical and healthcare institutions, up 15,000 from 2019, and over 9.1 million clinical beds in those institutions, which rose to 6.46 per 1,000 people from 6.3 per 1,000 people in 2019.