China should invest more money in promoting public health for the country's macroeconomic development, a health expert said yesterday.

Any investment needed to improve the health of the 1.3 billion people in China would be much less than the losses caused by poor health, said Cai Renhua, director of the China National Health Economics Institute based in Beijing.

Cai was speaking at a seminar in Beijing on macroeconomics and health jointly sponsored by the State Development Planning Commission, the ministries of finance and health, and the World Health Organization.

China currently accounts for one-fifth of the world's population. The average life expectancy of the population - a major index of a country's level of health - has increased from 35 years in 1950 to 71 in 1995.

However, health indices in China have improved at a much slower rate than the per capita income, especially during the past 20 years, said Professor Hu Angang from Beijing's Tsinghua University.

The total health expenditure of the Chinese mainland in 2000 was only 5.3 per cent of its GDP, just 0.3 percentage points higher than the minimum recommended by the WHO.

In China, the cost of treating hepatitis B alone has exceeded 26 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion) in a single year.

There are serious disparities in health-care coverage and substantial differences in residents' health both between urban and rural areas, and between coastal and inland provinces.

China's more than 800 million rural residents make up about 70 per cent of the total population but only use about 30 per cent of the country's medical resources.

For example, the usage rate of hospital beds at county level or higher has decreased from 80.9 per cent in 1990 to 60.8 per cent in 2000, Cai noted.

And less than 30 per cent of the total population are covered by China's system of medical insurance system.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, said: "Investments in health, if properly directed, can yield extraordinary results in terms of lives saved and increased economic productivity."

Sachs, also chairman of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, gave a presentation at the seminar on a report compiled by his commission over the past two years.

In the report, the commissioners said they believe that improved health is a critical requirement for economic development in poor countries.

(China Daily ZHANG FENG 19-12-2002)