Summary
China has undergone a remarkably rapid epidemiological transition over the past 40 years, from a preponderance of deaths due to Commimicable disease to a preponderance of deaths due to chronic disease.
As China looks ahead to the twenty-first century, with its reduced birth rate and longer life expectancy, it faces the prospect of ever higher percentages of older people. According to World Bank estimates, by 2025 China could have 185 million people aged 65 and over or about 12 percent of its projected 1.5 billion population, and the burden of chronic disease will be great. With the 2025 per capita gross national product unlikely to exceed U.S. $2,000, China will find it very difficult to provide the high technology, institution-based care for chronic disease that has become the dominant pattern in industrialized countries. Innovative and inexpensive methods for the prevention of and care for chronic illnesses, for providing continuing patient care, and for maintaining past gains in the control of communicable disease, are therefore even more important in China than in the economically developed countries. These challenges will be all the greater as China undergoes major social, economic, and political changes that have reduced its ability to mobilize mass patriotic campaigns and to provide organized rural health care.Thomas L. Hall and Victor W. Sidel
The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Gu Dezhang of the Chinese Medical Association, Beijing, in obtaining and verifying some of the data used in this chapter.
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