Ophthalmology
Articles
Eye diseases in China: the problem and the remedies
Many Chinese people have eye problems. Foreign companies can help with screening, timely diagnosis and treatment.
Nowhere in the world there are so many eye-disease patients as in China. One of the reasons is obvious: with its 1.4 billion inhabitants, China is by far the world’s most populous country. But there is more. China is growing old. Nearly 20 percent of the population is aged 60 or above, and many of them face eyesight problems. For instance, cataract is affecting 80 percent of those aged between 60 to 89, and 90 percent of those over 90. The number of senior citizens is fast growing – over the next decade, some 245 million people will retire – and so does the average life expectancy and the number of persons with AMD, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, short-shortsightedness (myopia) or cataract.
Surprisingly, the age-related eye-diseases don’t concern only the elderly. There is indeed another large sector of the population who suffer from eye diseases: the young. Myopia affects 54 percent among children and teenagers, and no less than 81 percent of high school students according to an April 2020 report of China’s top health authority. The number of young patients is not evenly distributed, since the rural-urban divide applies here as well: poor vision is more common in China’s well-off kids in the cities, whereas their poorer peers living in rural areas are at a higher risk of distance vision impairment and blindness.
The most important reasons why so many children are wearing glasses has to do with their homework overload and the large amount of time spent in front of screens. Many hours a day are passed in front of textbooks, tablets and mobile phones, learning, reading and online gaming. Even if we are seeing some changes such as attempts to limit daily screen time, COVID-19 has contributed to exacerbate this problem.
China still has a lack of medical doctors, although their number is fast increasing. At the end of 2019 China had over 3,860,000 medical doctors, 260,000 more than the year before, but this number is still far behind the soaring demand. There are few ophthalmologists, and among them the glaucoma specialists are extremely rare: only 500 in whole China. Equipment for glaucoma diagnosis and treatment are still insufficient. The last years, however, the specialism is undergoing a fast process of professionalization, just like the level of care and the expertise of all medical specialists are increasing.
Improving the public health system is one of the main issues in the country’s long-term economic strategy. Efforts are underway to narrow the gap in health services between urban and rural areas, between primary, secondary and tertiary hospitals. Besides the public and private medical institutions there are also local and international NGOs as well as charities active in ophthalmic health.
Among the population the awareness of eye health is fast increasing, even the highest among the six countries (China, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US) recently surveyed. According to this research more than three-quarters of Chinese adults said they view eye health as important for their overall health while over half of them recognize that good vision improves their overall quality of life. Some 80 percent are aware of myopia, but only 65 percent know about cataract, lower than the global average.
Health care in China has its own Chinese characteristics, such as the ‘mass education’ for prevention and screening (each disease is getting a national known top doctor in charge of popularization tasks), the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine in treatment (China has over 65,000 TCM medical institutions), the issuing by the government of special guidelines (such as the release, in August 2020, of the first Guidelines to Chinese Glaucoma), increasing self-reliance on own core technologies (in accordance with the new national economic policy).
Medical companies have to diligently understand the state of the eye diseases in China and to bear in mind the Chinese characteristics before making definitive plans and entering the Chinese market.
