China



The most populous country in the world, China is undergoing a health care revolution. Thanks to a stimulus plan launched at the end of 2008, the government is pouring almost 850 billion yuan – nearly $125 billion – to provide insurance coverage for 90 percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people by 2011. This stimulus package will also foot the bill for the construction of 30,000-odd clinics and nearly 2,000 county-level hospitals. To treat all of those newly insured people, newly built health centers will need equipment, but they won’t be able to buy used or refurbished medical goods from abroad. Since 1998, China has expressly forbidden the import of used medical devices, in part because it feared it was becoming a dumping ground for defective products, officials with the U.S. Department of Commerce told DOTmed News. But these restrictions might eventually thaw. In 2003, China passed the Administrative Measures on Product Inspection and Supervision of Imported Used Mechanical and Electrical Products, which would overturn the 1998 ban. But, the DOC says, no progress has been made on it so far.

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