Chinese numbers week of April 27th, 2009

Posted By James Flanagan

In an effort to sift through the huge amounts of numbers coming out every week, here are a couple that I’ve picked up.

From Caijin, Urban Medical Insurance to Cover 390 Mln People in 2009, the Chinese government is planning:

“to expand its urban medical insurance system to cover 390 million people in 2009, according to Hu Xiaoyi, deputy minister of Human Resources and Social Security.”
….
“[to] extend maternity insurance to 100 million urban citizens [in 2009].”

From the Wall Street Journal China Blog, ‘A Modest Number’: 100 Million Chinese Suffer from Mental Illness

A senior mental health official says that at least 100 million Chinese people, or 7.7% of the population, suffer from mental illness, the Telegraph reports.

“This is a modest number,” Huang Yueqin, the director of the National Center for Mental Health, told the paper, noting that actual figures may be much higher. By her own estimate, Huang says a third of her university classmates have had some form of mental illness.

The WHO notes that mental illness has overtaken heart disease and cancer as the largest burden on China’s health care system. There are few mental health professionals working in China today, and Huang estimates that only 5% of China’s mentally ill seek treatment.

The definition of mental illness used by Huang appears to be fairly broad, including less debilitating cases of anxiety and depression. By way of comparison, in any given year, over a quarter of American adults (about 58 million people) are believed to suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, while the prevalence of serious mental illness in the U.S. population is significantly lower, at around 6%, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But the U.S. has around 40,000 licensed psychiatrists, 10 times the number in China.

In smaller news, a new health care PE fund at Caijin, CCB Wins Approval for 5 Bln Yuan Health Care PE Fund:

A China Construction Bank unit has won approval to set up a 5 billion yuan private equity health care fund, the first of its kind, a company official said.
…
This fund will be co-managed by CCB International and Tongren Hospital, which also produces medicine and medical equipment.