Private practice in the health sector was re-introduced from 1980, when China began its economic reform from a planned economy to a market economy. But today the total number of private sector providers is quite few, because the government does not encourage the growth of private sector...

Background: The current health care reform in China launched in 2009 tackles the problem of access to appropriate medicines for its 1.3 billion people by focusing on providing essential medicines to all. To provide evidence for the reform process, we investigated the manufacturing, purchasing,...