The Lancet  
Mar 03, 2012  Volume 379  Number 9818  p777 – 866
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/current

Review
Early appraisal of China’s huge and complex health-care reforms
Winnie Chi-Man Yip, William C Hsiao, Wen Chen, Shanlian Hu, Jin Ma, Alan Maynard

Preview
China’s 3 year, CN¥850 billion (US$125 billion) reform plan, launched in 2009, marked the first phase towards achieving comprehensive universal health coverage by 2020. The government’s undertaking of systemic reform and its affirmation of its role in financing health care together with priorities for prevention, primary care, and redistribution of finance and human resources to poor regions are positive developments. Accomplishing nearly universal insurance coverage in such a short time is commendable.

Urbanisation and health in China
Peng Gong, Song Liang, Elizabeth J Carlton, Qingwu Jiang, Jianyong Wu, Lei Wang, Justin V Remais

Summary
China has seen the largest human migration in history, and the country’s rapid urbanisation has important consequences for public health. A provincial analysis of its urbanisation trends shows shifting and accelerating rural-to-urban migration across the country and accompanying rapid increases in city size and population. The growing disease burden in urban areas attributable to nutrition and lifestyle choices is a major public health challenge, as are troubling disparities in health-care access, vaccination coverage, and accidents and injuries in China’s rural-to-urban migrant population. Urban environmental quality, including air and water pollution, contributes to disease both in urban and in rural areas, and traffic-related accidents pose a major public health threat as the country becomes increasingly motorised. To address the health challenges and maximise the benefits that accompany this rapid urbanisation, innovative health policies focused on the needs of migrants and research that could close knowledge gaps on urban population exposures are needed.