World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan praised Chinese government's efforts to improve public medical and health care services on Thursday.

She said she had noticed that the six tasks on improving people's well-being in the report by Chinese President Hu Jintao at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China included the basic medical insurance systems for urban workers and dwellers and a new type of cooperative medical care system in rural areas.

"The public health service should put the stress on social equality and fairness," she said at a forum on China's rural health care services, organized jointly by the WHO and the Chinese Ministry of Health.

She appreciated the Chinese government's efforts and plans to build medical systems for all people, saying "when fair and accessible public health services become the clear targets of a country's public health policy, people's health will be improved".

Chen Zhu, Chinese Health minister, said the Chinese government stressed harmonious development and valued the fairness of public health services.

He said the Chinese government will continue to improve health services in rural areas aiming to enable rural residents to enjoy the benefits of China's reform and development.

"The Chinese government will commit to build a fair public heath system in line with social and economic development," he said.

He said "China has made remarkable achievements in the improvement of public health care services", but also admitted "there are still many challenges for the health care services in rural areas such as inadequate medical resources".

China started the medical service reform in the early 1990s to abolish the system in which governments and state-run enterprises covered most medical expenses of urban Chinese. However, rural people found it rather hard to get access to medical care.

Now medical insurance has been introduced and promoted in urban areas, and cooperative medical care has been experimented in the countryside. In this sense, all Chinese people will be able to enjoy an affordable medical service.

The cooperative medical care system in rural areas, initiated in 2003 to offer farmers basic health care, covered 720 million rural residents, or 82.8 percent of the country's rural population, by the end of June this year.

(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2007)