Wednesday

July 12

More in Beijing sign up for family doctor services

More than one-third of Beijing’s permanent residents were covered by family doctor services as of the end of last year, according to the Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission.

By the end of last year, 3.84 million households in Beijing, or 7.7 million residents, had signed up for family doctor services at community health centers, accounting for more than 35 percent of the city’s permanent population, said Liu Zejun, a member of the Beijing commission who is in charge of disease prevention and control,

The fee is $17.60 a year, but after government subsidies, it comes to less than $2.94.

Last year, average life expectancy in Beijing increased to more than 82 years, up from 80.4 in 2009, while the infant mortality rate decreased to 2.21 per thousand last year, from 3.49 per thousand in 2009 — a level similar to that of developed countries.

Gay men find HIV drug in Thailand, not China

Thailand has been a hot destination for Chinese tourists for years. Yet many now are heading to the Southeast Asian country for a new reason — to buy cheap drugs to prevent HIV.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis, commonly known as PrEP, is a medicine that, if taken daily, can reduce the risk of HIV infection via sexual intercourse by more than 90 percent, according to health studies.

Several countries recommend the drugs as a weapon to prevent the spread of HIV among people in high-risk groups, such as gay men.

However, the China Food and Drug Administration approved PrEP in 2015 for the treatment of HIV/AIDS — not prevention — which means doctors are not allowed to prescribe it to patients unless they test positive for the virus.

Advocates say prevention is worthwhile, given that the prevalence of HIV among Chinese gay men averages more than 5 percent in most cities and can exceed 10 percent in major metropolises, according to the National Center for AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Disease Control.