Health care in China:

The most common prescription is for antibiotics, with devastating effect. The health ministry announced the results of a survey this week showing about 70 per cent of child pneumonia patients were resistant to drugs used to treat the disease, because of overuse of antibiotics. In three children’s hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the country’s wealthiest cities, the figure climbed to 90 per cent.

The systemic problems are notorious enough to be the subject of media pranks. A Chinese journalist visited 10 hospitals this year and, pretending to be a patient, provided tea in the place of a requested urine sample. Six of the hospitals said they had discovered “blood cells” in the “urine” and immediately prescribed drugs.