The World Bank Board of Executive Directors www.worldbank.org has approved a $600 million loan to China to be implemented from 2017 to 2021 to help improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare services in China’s Anhui and Fujian provinces. The loan will enable the use of the “Program-for-Results” (PforR) instrument to link loan disbursements to tangible results.
“China has made impressive gains in improving overall health outcomes in past decades, but now faces new challenges such as an aging population, and an increasing burden of chronic diseases which is resulting in fast rising health expenditures.
This program will support China’s efforts to scale up successful health reform pilots and innovations to tackle these challenges”, said Ramesh Govindaraj, World Bank Lead Health Specialist and team leader for the program.
The program aims to improve the quality and efficiency of hospital services by reforming hospital governance and management, controlling the growth of health expenditures, strengthening service quality, and establishing performance monitoring and evaluation systems.
Secondly, the program will establish an effective People Centered Integrated Care model with an emphasis on primary care. This would be accomplished by strengthening the service capacity of primary care facilities by intensifying the training of healthcare workers, implementing provider payment reform, and introducing a model for service delivery.
Lastly, the program will create a policy and institutional environment for health reform by strengthening oversight, develop health IT systems, build capacity of health providers, and establish a platform for knowledge-sharing and learning.
The World Bank Group has been involved in the health sector in China over the past three decades. The Bank has been working with the country on more than a dozen projects ranging from rural health service development and medical education, infectious and endemic diseases, tuberculosis control, and maternal and child health.