China brings quality healthcare closer to people's homes

China is bridging the healthcare resource gap, by promoting integrated medical consortiums and deploying targeted cross-regional assistance, to ensure quality medical services are accessible to all citizens.

China has long faced an uneven distribution of medical resources, with stronger services in the east and weaker ones in the west.

In places like Anning, a city in southwest China's Yunnan Province, a dispersed population and a shortage of grassroots medical talent and equipment once meant that residents had to travel long distances to larger cities for treatment.

To close this gap, the country is promoting integrated medical consortiums. These networks link township clinics, county hospitals, and specialists via remote consultations, sharing resources and bringing quality care directly to rural areas.

Through unified management, medical resources are no longer fragmented; instead, townships conduct examinations, county hospitals provide diagnoses, and experts offer remote consultations, creating a highly coordinated and efficient healthcare system.

For local residents, this shift has brought tangible benefits.

"In the past, we had to travel to the county town or Anning city for these diagnoses, which was very inconvenient. Now, people can truly access these services right at their doorstep. This policy is really great," said Li, a local patient.

The transformation in Anning is driven by comprehensive coverage and technological upgrades at the grassroots level.

"We have expanded services such as ECG, prescription reviews, medicine delivery and regional testing across counties, townships and villages. This year, we are also expanding AI services and remote consultations, so people can access more standardized healthcare services close to home," said Song Chao, president of the Anning Medical Consortium.

Anning's local practices are a reflection of China's broader national efforts to expand medical assistance across regions and institutions, helping to narrow the healthcare resource gap between the eastern, central, and western parts of the country.

As part of this overarching strategy, more than 1,500 medical professionals from 21 provinces have been dispatched this year to regions including Xizang, Xinjiang, and Qinghai to provide assistance to local medical practitioners. Meanwhile, 82 national medical teams are regularly delivering medical services to counties with limited healthcare resources, ensuring that high-quality care reaches even the most remote corners of the country, just as it has in Anning.

China brings quality healthcare closer to people's homes

Officials and industry insiders have called for greater efforts to ensure the vast resources of the African continent can truly deliver industrial growth and provide much-needed employment as deals worth billions of dollars have already been struck at the 2026 African Energy Week (AEW) in South Africa's Cape Town.

The five-day event officially opened on Tuesday, with South Africa calling for stronger energy cooperation across the continent to maintain affordable and abundant energy supplies amid global geopolitical tensions and market disruptions.

First held back in 2021, the AEW event serves as a key platform for discussions on energy investment, market access and industrial growth, bringing together stakeholders to shape a shared vision for Africa's energy future.

Optimism is high among attendees given the sizable agreements which have been signed so far and are set to deliver numerous landmark projects across Africa.

"This year at AEW, we have already seen 10 billion dollars worth of deals. Angola for example where we have seen EduEnergias take over some of the legacy assets given by Chevron. We also seen Senegal makes significant announcements around gas projects in that country. And the same thing is [happening in] Nigeria around what AMNI is doing and getting more gas for Train 7 [LNG Project]. We're looking at the Morocco-Nigeria pipeline which is also going to be asking for significant investment dollars that in itself phased, is going to require far beyond the 10 billion dollars that I said," said Verner Ayukegba, senior vice president of the African Energy Chamber.

From drilling technology to companies looking to invest in new projects, the scale of the industry is on full display. But many say the case for attracting investment goes far beyond just extracting oil and gas, with some pointing to the positive knock-on effect which can come in an economic sense. Godfrey Moagi, CEO of the South African National Petroleum Company, said the question is now about how nurturing resources can create jobs and ultimately support wider growth.

"We've got a very big opportunity. We're [going to add] more data centers, you've got a lot of gas, you need a lot of energy. And I think we are going to have to do that to deal with unemployment. Just [conducting] exploration and extracting that gas and oil brings unemployment down, but actually imagine now, if we actually get [related] industries, it becomes very powerful," said Moagi.

Deals struck at African Energy Week must create jobs, advance industrial growth: participants