Xizang sees significant advances in healthcare

The health levels of residents in the Xizang autonomous region has reached an all-time high in history thanks to a combination of funds and medical aid projects dedicated to boosting the region's healthcare sector, authorities said on Friday. Liu Kui, director of the National Health Commission's finance department, said that a variety of medical aid programs to help Xizang have been rolled out over the past three decades, including building partnerships between Xizang and other more developed regions and sending medical groups or renowned professionals from major hospitals to Xizang. Guo Luo, deputy director of Xizang's health commission, said that the region now has over 1,800 medical institutions with 22,000 hospital beds, compared with less than 1,200 hospitals with 5,600 beds about three decades ago. "Thanks to continuous medical assistance, the hospital is now equipped with 224 medical staff and 29 different clinical apartments and is able to carry out some minimally invasive procedures," he said, adding that 12 local medical professionals have been nurtured and the ratio of patients being transferred outside the county among all patients has significantly dropped.