2011-06-23 14:00

Bayer HealthCare signed an agreement with the Ministry of Health on Tuesday to add 20 million yuan ($3.09 million) in investment to continue its "Go West" medical training project, which was first launched in 2007.

The new agreement extends the project by another five years, from 2012 to 2017. Bayer HealthCare, a subsidiary of the Germany-based Bayer AG, is committed to providing better education for Chinese medical professionals, particularly at the county level in the areas of academia, hospital management and doctor-patient relationships.

The project aims to provide professional training for 10,000 county-level healthcare professionals in western China.

As of June, approximately 4,000 rural doctors from 13 provinces and autonomous regions have accepted the training, including some 2,500 ethnic minority doctors from Yunnan, Qinghai and Guizhou provinces, as well as the Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet autonomous regions. Thanks to the new investment, the project will bring doctors and hospitals to 23 new provinces.

"Go West is one of the biggest community welfare projects Bayer is initiating in China," said Marijn Dekkers, Bayer AG's chairman of the board of management. "We are happy to know that more and more patients in Chinese rural areas are now able to enjoy high-standard healthcare services without travelling abroad. That is the reason why we will continue this pioneering project."

2011 marks the final year of the first phase of healthcare reform, and the first year of China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). The main objectives in healthcare development under the plan are to strengthen the capabilities of China county-level medical facilities and improve local healthcare service. It recently announced a new plan to expand reform to 300 county-level hospitals, in the hopes of seeing faster progress there.

Bayer's "Go West" project echoes the call for public hospital reforms and the general trend of healthcare professional development. The project has become a supplement to the capacity building for rural medical workers and a model for building a long-term, complete training system for physicians working in grassroots healthcare services. Huang Jiefu, vice minister of health, said that he expected Bayer to continue contributing its expertise and medical knowledge to the improvement of healthcare services for the benefit of the Chinese people.