Equality, Development and Sharing: Progress of Women's Cause in 70 Years Since New China's Founding

The system of laws, regulations and policies on maternal and child health has been continuously improved. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, maternal and child health was actively promoted as an important part of healthcare. Over the past four decades since the reform and opening up, China has promulgated and implemented laws and regulations on maternal and child health, including the Law of the People's Republic of China on Maternal and Infant Health Care. China has incorporated maternal and child health into its overall economic and social development plan. Many national plans, including the Outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the Outline of the Healthy China 2030, the Program for the Development of Chinese Women and the Program for the Development of Chinese Children, all set out specific targets and measures for maternal and child health, incorporate core indicators of maternal and child health into the target assessment of governments at all levels, and strengthen the primary responsibilities of the government.

A network of maternal and child health services with Chinese characteristics has been improved. China is committed to strengthening the construction of maternal and child health institutions. Since 1950, a network of maternal and child health services with Chinese characteristics has been gradually established in urban and rural areas, with maternity and child care institutions as the core, community-level health care institutions as the foundation, and large and medium-sized medical institutions and relevant research and teaching institutions as the support. Over the past four decades since the reform and opening up, China has continued to increase input in the community-level network of maternal and child healthcare and improve the service system. China has built an annual reporting system as well as the largest monitoring network in the world on maternal and child health. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the network of maternal and child healthcare has been gradually embedded into the medical security network covering 1.4 billion people and the three-tier medical care network covering urban and rural areas. The IT construction of maternal and child health has been strengthened. In 2018, there were 3,080 maternal and child care institutions, 807 maternity hospitals and nearly 640,000 maternal and child care workers throughout the country. The World Health Organization lists China as one of the 10 countries with high performance in maternal and child health.