Ten years' GP training in China: progress and challenges

The author talk about China which launched a programme of major primary healthcare reform, with the aim of achieving universal health coverage across urban and rural areas by 2020. This required a strong GP workforce. Facing a critical shortage of qualified GPs [32,400 nationwide], the Chinese government set a national target of providing 2-3 GPs per 10,000 population, a total of 300,000 GPs by 2020. Efforts to achieve this goal have progressed, as illustrated by data suggesting there were 309,800 in total (2.2 GPs per 10,000 population) in 2018. They explore the progress and challenges in GP training in China over the past 10 years and its prospects for the future.