Hospitals nationwide to offer pain-free childbirth

China plans to expand access to pain relief during labor and delivery as part of efforts to build a birth-friendly society, health authorities said on Thursday.

By the end of this year, all tertiary hospitals offering obstetric services in China will be capable of delivering epidural anesthesia during childbirth, and by 2027, all secondary hospitals will be able to provide the services, according to a notice released by the National Health Commission and the country's top traditional Chinese medicine and disease control authorities.

Efforts will be made to strengthen building infrastructure needed for administering epidural labor relief, such as setting up a dedicated procedure room that meets strict sterilization standards and ensuring constant monitoring of hospital-acquired infections.

It is also important to guarantee supplies of equipment and medications, while enhancing training of specialized personnel.

"The cooperation and coordination between obstetrics and anesthesia departments should be strengthened … including promoting information sharing between them so as to closely monitor the condition of women in labor," the notice said.

Authorities also urged hospitals to upgrade management protocols covering the entire process of pain relief during labor, including early evaluations, diagnosis and treatment of potential complications, and post-labor assessments.

"Hospitals are encouraged to include prenatal labor analgesia assessments into routine prenatal examinations," it said, adding that training to foster more professionals in anesthesia administration should be ramped up.

Only 30 percent of pregnant women in China receive anesthesia to relieve pain during childbirth, compared with more than 70 percent in some developed countries.

Experts have attributed the low rate to long-standing misperceptions about the side effects of anesthesia on newborns, a shortage of anesthesiologists and unregulated pricing standards.

The country began piloting the expansion of childbirth anesthesia at 912 hospitals across 30 provincial-level regions in 2018.

At those hospitals, the prevalence of pain relief use rose from 27.5 percent in 2015 to 60.2 percent in 2022, according to official data.

In recent years, a growing number of regions have begun covering childbirth anesthesia fees in their medical insurance programs in an effort to relieve families' financial burden.

Jiangsu province in eastern China included epidural anesthesia — priced at around 2,000 yuan ($279) per session — in its regional healthcare insurance program on July 1. As of March, nearly 80,000 pregnant women had benefited from the policy change.