China Spent 1.4T Yuan on Health-Led Poverty Relief, Lancet Finds
BEIJING – November 04, 2026 -- China invested approximately 1.4 trillion yuan in health-related poverty alleviation between 2015 and 2020, according to a Lancet Commission report launched at Tsinghua University on October 29.
The Commission, led by Tsinghua University and chaired by Margaret Chan, Dean of the Vanke School of Public Health and WHO Director-General Emeritus, analyzed four years of data on China's health poverty alleviation policies and their implementation.
Out-of-pocket inpatient costs for the poor fell ten percentage points
The share of inpatient expenses paid out of pocket by people living in poverty declined from 41.0% in 2013 to 31.0% in 2018. A national monitoring system now tracks more than 80 million low-income rural residents to identify risks of health-related poverty.