Number of China's healthcare workers, sickbeds both rises

BEIJING - Last year saw further improvement of China's healthcare service capacity, with the medical and health workers totaling 12.3 million as of the end of 2018, up 4.7 percent year-on-year, according to a National Health Commission statistical report.

Of them, 60 percent, or 7.37 million, worked at hospitals, while 32 percent, or 3.96 million were with smaller, primary-level medical institutions based in communities, townships, and villages, the report noted.

There were 2.59 licensed medical practitioners and 2.94 registered nurses per 1,000 people in China last year, it said, adding that there were 2.22 general practitioners per 10,000 people.

China's medical and health institutions boasted a total of 8.4 million sickbeds as of the end of 2018, up 5.8 percent year-on-year. The number of sickbeds per 1,000 people rose from 5.72 in 2017 to 6.03 in 2018.

A total of 8.31 billion medical treatments were offered at healthcare institutions across China in 2018, up 1.6 percent compared with a year earlier, the report noted, adding that there was an average of six visits to a medical and health institution per resident in China last year.