Health and education beyond borders

The New Silk Road aims to connect China’s grand route with Africa, Asia, and Europe through cyberspace and physical space, promising prosperity and innovation. One Belt, One Road (OBOR), or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), promises the construction of a massive $1 trillion infrastructure including highways, dry and seaports, power plants, and state of the art telecommunication network. One Belt, One Road has been highly criticised for the wide flow of benefits mostly to China. Will the unprecedented influx of development financing improve the Human Development Index of people living along the belt?

China has fast changed its course of economic development at the turn of the century, from being a major recipient of Global Funds grant to a net provider of financial assistance. The World Bank has provided a total of $2.47 billion worth of low interest rate loans to the Chinese government. The financial assistance provided by China to middle income countries included medical training by Chinese doctors. Moreover, China has also been a provider of medical equipment and drugs to these countries for building health facilities and supporting malaria prevention. In 2014, after the breakout of the Ebola epidemic in Africa, China had played a key role in increasing health partnerships and health assistance as a part of China’s BRI development strategy. China has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the World Health Organisation in efforts to strengthen ties with the UN. Furthermore, a new International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA) for foreign aid coordination has been launched to organise all countries involved in the BRI to approve a communique aiming to “synergise efforts in medical emergency response and epidemic prevention”.

On education front, the BRI launched the University Alliance of the Silk Road in 2015 which is a collaboration of about 130 universities across five continents coordinated by China’s Xian Jiaotong University. This cooperation across borders envisions development of an alliance among its members and encourages human development along the BRI in higher education. Furthermore, other member countries also have opened their university campuses abroad. Examples are University of Xiamen in Malaysia and Soochow University, which has been running an office in Laos since 2011. These universities not only allow the flow of information technology and local skills across borders but also help in spreading job opportunities along the belt.

Since the rapid growth in China’s population and widespread economic integration along the borders and beyond, the development of health in the region is the obvious next step towards moving forward. China now has 95% of its population covered by basic health insurance and has achieved a 40-fold increase in its total health expenditure (5.6%) over the past two decades. China experienced a major epidemic outbreak in 2003 of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which had instantly highlighted the need to keep the health sector as a priority. The temporary economic shock by the SARS epidemic was 2.63% and 1.05% of GDP, mostly affecting the mainland China. This prompted a need for advancing collaborative risk prevention and emergency response by Beijing. A study on the SARS outbreak predicted that if the epidemic recurred today, the immediate costs for the global economy would jump up by over 70% from what it cost in 2013.

At the One Belt and One Road Initiative forum held in 2018, President Xi Jinping announced China’s pledge to create 100 health projects for women and children in the developing world — a commitment to maternal and child health. Furthermore, investment is being made in vaccine development and biomedical advances in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The progress report has showed a whopping investment of $3 billion from 2000 to 2012 in 255 projects geared towards curbing the problems relating to health, population, and water and sanitation in Africa. In Bangladesh, hospitals and malaria control centres have been invested in, providing anti-malarial treatment and trained healthcare workers.

The healthcare system in China is very well organised with 95% of its population enjoying access to health insurance. However in Pakistan, population per doctor and population per bed did not improve much over the years. Also the domestic pharmaceutical industry in China is much stronger with 22 of all 25 manufacturing units being owned by domestic companies. Therefore, CPEC can play a pivotal role in the development of healthcare in Pakistan. This is to be made possible through the availability of cheap raw material to Pakistani manufacturers via the CPEC route.

In order to conclude, CPEC has also been a source of providing medical students in Pakistan education facility in China. Almost 10,000 students have already graduated and working in different fields. Also over 200,000 students from 64 countries in OBOR have been getting education via government scholarship programmes. However, Pakistani students have been the most in number, ranking at the top fourth of all international students in China. In order to facilitate the CPEC infrastructure in Gwadar, Vice-Chairman of Chinese Red Cross Foundation Liu Xuanguo has plans to set up second emergency care unit in Quetta, Balochistan. In future, CPEC should facilitate the setup of new medical colleges and universities, state-of-the-art R&D labs and pharmacies along CPEC. This will help enhance the medical skills of professional doctors, pharmacists and other medical staff. Exchange programmes can also be initiated. In order to build a fully functional health and knowledge corridor, industry technicians from both China and Pakistan will be needed to bring revolutionary changes in the health sector.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2019.

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