China to continue sending medical aid abroad

China plans to continue sending foreign medical teams abroad while establishing more clinical centers overseas, a health official said on Friday.

He Zhaohua, deputy director of the National Health Commission's international cooperation department, said that China is the world's only country to dispatch overseas medical aid groups continuously over the past six decades. 

China sent its first medical aid team overseas in 1963 to Algeria, and since then, about 30,000 medical workers from China have provided services to nearly 300 million patients in 76 countries and regions across the world. They have also helped build 130 healthcare facilities overseas and trained 100,000 local medical professionals, according to He. 

"As the biggest developing economy in the world, China has developed a series of technologies in the fields of maternal and child health, hospital management and public health and accumulated rich experiences that would be worth learning for many other developing countries, and they are eager to cooperate with and learn from China," he said.

He stressed that health partnerships between China and the rest of the developing world are based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit.

"At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many developing countries supported China and made donations despite their own limited resources," he said. "It shows that our health partnerships do not mean one party giving charities in a condescending manner. Rather, we have formed an equal and mutually beneficial alliance."

He said that China will continue to send medical aid teams overseas, deepen cooperation between domestic and foreign hospitals, increase local clinical capability and strengthen cooperation in the public health sector.