Dean Barry Bloom (l) introduced Minister Gao Qiang

An economist by training, Minister Gao became health minister last spring. Before that, he was appointed Executive Minister of Health during the SARS crisis and played a key role in containing the spread of the disease. Speaking through an interpreter, Minister Gao covered a range of subjects, including health care reform, chronic diseases, and public health emergency preparedness and response.

His lecture drew a packed house, many of whom spoke Chinese, as evidenced by good-humored crowd reaction before the interpreter spoke. Earlier in the day, Minister Gao met with Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, then attended a mini-seminar at HSPH about the School's research, including work on avian flu, emergency response leadership, non-communicable diseases, and rural health system reform.

At the lecture in Gordon Hall, Minister Gao said that efforts are underway to prepare for a potential avian flu pandemic, but, at the time of the lecture, only about 120 humans had contracted the virus worldwide. He said there have been isolated outbreaks in three villages in three different provinces in China. Cases have been linked to the handling of infected poultry, he said.

"We should pay attention and be careful, but we should not panic,'' he said.

Plans include open, transparent, and timely communication and collaboration with other governments and with international organizations, he said.

Minister Gao's visit to Harvard was his first stop in the U.S. following a meeting in Canada with a number of health ministers on pandemic preparedness. At the Ottawa meeting, he said that China seeks enhanced cooperation among all countries and among governments, international organizations, enterprises, and non-governmental agencies to form a united front against the disease. He said that China had set up 192 flu monitoring stations nationwide.

In his introductory remarks, HSPH Dean Barry Bloom noted Minister Gao's efforts to control SARS in 2003. "He played an instrumental role in mobilizing the public health resources and strategies that led to the remarkable control of a respiratory-transmitted disease in an unprecedented fashion," Dean Bloom said.

Minister Gao thanked Dean Bloom for the invitation to visit the School and noted long-standing HSPH research projects in China, including those conducted by HSPH Professor William Hsiao and Assistant Professor Yuanli Liu and other School faculty.

Last summer, Dean Bloom, Minister Gao, and other officials from the Chinese Ministry of Health and from Tsinghua University in Beijing signed a memorandum of agreement for planning a program to train senior Chinese health executives. The five-year project is expected to involve about 500 executives and to offer two training courses each year.

China's health care system has experienced several large successes since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, noted Minister Gao. Foremost among them is an increase in life expectancy from 35 to 72 years. Immunization rates for those under age one are in excess of 98 percent, he said.

A large crowd asked numerous questions during a Q&A session.

Minister Gao spoke openly about areas in which he would like to see improvement within China's health care system, answering numerous questions collected on paper from the audience. For example, he noted the gap between services available in rural and urban areas.

"The best medical resources are concentrated in large hospitals in major cities," he said. "The best hospitals get bigger and bigger. On the other hand, health services at the rural and community levels, which are the closest to the people and most convenient, are not very well developed."

There are also efforts to provide more widespread health insurance, particularly to farmers, the unemployed, and uninsured children.

Like the U.S., China is witnessing increasing rates in chronic health problems, along with the aging of the general population. For example, 18.8 percent of adults suffer from hypertension and 2.6 percent of the population has diabetes.

In the future, Minister Gao said that he will seek an increase in the health care budget and will work to improve the government's capacity to respond to public health emergencies.

"Promoting the health of the people must be put high on the agenda of government," he said. "Second, diseases respect no international boundaries. So health ministers should be international ministers. In my future work, I will strengthen cooperation between governments, particularly with the U.S."

Minister Gao urged the audience to enhance their understanding of China and to contribute to building a more constructive, collaborative relationship with the country as it develops and reforms its health sector.

—ML