Public Health Safety And Health Supervision:Issues And Solutions

Public health refers to all the activities of preventing disease,prolonging life and promoting human health of an entire population of a country through establishment of a public health system under the leadership of the government.The uncertainty of medical service and information asymmetry between supply and requisitioning parties can easily lead to market failure of public medical and healthcare services.Because of the market failure in public health resource allocation,public health fund-raising and service provision,government intervention and regulation are needed to enhance efficiency,promote equity and guard public health safety.The main roles of the government in public health services include evaluation,policy study and safeguard of public health services,which are mainly aimed at ensuring implementation of public health intervention plans via enforcement of health laws and regulations.In China,the public health system consists of health administration departments,centers for disease control and prevention,public health regulatory bodies,medical treatment institutions and public health research institutions at all levels.As the economy grows,people pay more and more attention to public health safety.Public health incidents which happened frequently during rapid social transformation and deepening reform in China in the past reflect vulnerability of the public health system.As a vital part of public health safety regulation by the government,public health supervision and regulation enforcement which is are directly related to whether public health safety can be guaranteed.Amid more than ten years of development,the public health regulatory bodies in China have played an active part in guarding public health safety.However during the deepening reform in China and especially medical service system reform,traditional health supervision and regulation enforcement cannot keep up pace with current economic and social development.Based on a case study on health regulation in Zhejiang province,this paper identifies the main issues in health supervision.All these issues are seen with different severity in the public health regulatory bodies at all levels.Successful health regulation practices can be found home and aboard.Law-based public health regulation practices,represented by Germany,and public health regulation practices with Chinese characteristics,represented by Shenzhen,offer abundant lessons and inspirations for improvement of public health regulation.This paper provides solutions to health regulation based comparative analysis so as to attain an aim of maintaining public health safety.