Survey of Tuberculosis Hospitals in China: Current Status and Challenges

BACKGROUND: Hospitals will play an increasingly important role in delivering TB services in China, however little is known in terms of the current landscape of the hospital system that delivers TB care. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In order to examine the status of TB hospitals we performed a study in which a total of 203 TB hospitals, with 30 beds or more, were enrolled from 31 provinces and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Of the 203 hospitals, 93 (45.8%) were located in the eastern region of China, 84 (41.4%) in the central region, and 26 (12.8%) in the western region, while there were 34.6 million TB patients in western China, accounting for 34.6% of the TB burden nationwide. The total number of staff in these 203 hospitals was 83,011, of which 18,899 (22.8%) provided health services for TB patients, (physicians, nurses, lab technicians, etc). Although both the overall number of the health care workers and TB staff in the 203 hospitals increased from the year 1999 to 2009, the former increased by 52%, while the latter increased only by 34%, showing that the percentage of TB staff declined significantly (χ(2) = 181.7, P<0.01). The total annual income of the 203 hospitals increased 5.5 fold from 1999 to 2009, while that from TB care increased 3.8 fold during the same period. TB care and control experienced a relatively slower development during this period as shown by the lower percentage of TB staff and the lesser increase in income from TB care in the hospitals. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: In conclusion, our findings demonstrated that hospital resources are scarcer in western China as compared with eastern China. In view of the current findings, policymakers are urged to address the uneven distribution of medical resources between the underdeveloped west and the more affluent eastern provinces.