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Years of hard work, only to be set back to square one by illness. The fact that ordinary families are impoverished by illness, and impoverished families cannot afford medical care, has always been a major challenge to China's poverty alleviation efforts.

Health Yuan, which has been deeply involved in the pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years, has launched a unique combination of punches in the field of precision poverty alleviation: providing medical care, medicine, and jobs, combining health poverty alleviation with industrial poverty alleviation to achieve the goal of permanently lifting more poor people out of poverty.

12 million people were impoverished or returned to poverty due to illness

In today's society, "chronic diseases" such as hypertension, diabetes, and bronchial asthma have become the leading causes of death among urban and rural residents in China. According to data, there are currently more than 300 million chronic disease patients in China, and the number of deaths from "chronic diseases" accounts for 80% of the total number of deaths from illness in China, and the disease burden accounts for 70% of the total disease burden. To this end, the state has promulgated a series of policies to control the prevalence of chronic diseases in China. The prevention and control of "chronic diseases" in China's impoverished areas has also received great attention from the central government.

According to statistics, among the more than 30 million impoverished people who have not yet been lifted out of poverty, about 40% were impoverished or returned to poverty due to illness. Hu Jinglin, director of the National Healthcare Security Administration, said that most of the remaining impoverished people are those with severe illnesses and poor conditions, and many of these illnesses are long-term, chronic, and easily recurrent. After the eradication of absolute poverty in 2020, there will still be a small number of people who are impoverished or return to poverty due to illness, and alleviating relative poverty will always be a long-term task.

As early as November 2015, the Central Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development held in Beijing listed the implementation of the health poverty alleviation project as one of the seven major actions to win the battle against poverty, requiring efforts to ensure that rural impoverished people enjoy basic medical and health services, prevent impoverishment and return to poverty due to illness, strengthen health poverty alleviation construction in impoverished areas, and continuously improve the precision and accuracy of poverty alleviation.

On November 23, 2016, the State Council issued the "13th Five-Year Plan" for Poverty Alleviation and Development. The Plan, in accordance with the basic strategy of precision poverty alleviation and poverty eradication, adopts measures tailored to local conditions and classifies policies. It specifies the relevant paths and measures in eight aspects: 1. Poverty alleviation through industrial development; 2. Poverty alleviation through relocation of employment; 3. Poverty alleviation through relocation; 4. Poverty alleviation through education; 5. Poverty alleviation through health; 6. Poverty alleviation through ecological protection; 7. Bottom-line guarantee; 8. Social poverty alleviation.

Health poverty alleviation is undoubtedly the most arduous aspect of all poverty alleviation measures, and it is also the task with the heaviest burden, the most difficult implementation process, the longest duration, and the most professional division of labor and cooperation.

In October 2018, the National Healthcare Security Administration, together with the Ministry of Finance and the State Council's Poverty Alleviation Office, jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for the Three-Year Action on Health Poverty Alleviation (2018-2020)", requiring a focus on deeply impoverished areas such as the "Three Regions and Three States" and special impoverished populations such as those impoverished or returned to poverty due to illness, giving full play to the role of basic medical insurance, major illness insurance, and medical assistance systems, and effectively improving the level of medical security benefits for rural impoverished populations.

Health Yuan promotes long-term poverty alleviation

Health Yuan is undoubtedly one of the earliest pharmaceutical companies to carry out health poverty alleviation, but its poverty alleviation measures are different from other companies. Health Yuan, through health poverty alleviation and industrial poverty alleviation, has enabled the poor in impoverished areas to achieve sustainable poverty alleviation.

First, while the whole country is fighting the battle against "chronic diseases" and "medical poverty alleviation", Health Yuan and Lizhu Pharmaceutical Group actively carry out "medical poverty alleviation" measures, launching a tough battle against "chronic diseases".

Health Yuan has launched a special "health poverty alleviation" plan, precisely targeting hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, donating millions of yuan worth of drugs, including Pravastatin Capsules, Amlodipine Besylate Capsules, Irbesartan Tablets, Valsartan Capsules, and Isosorbide Mononitrate Tablets, to the impoverished county of Zhaotien District, Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province. These drugs can truly help economically disadvantaged families with illnesses, making it convenient for patients in the area to obtain medicine nearby and providing timely assistance to low-income people.

The project manager of the company told reporters that in the future, Health Yuan will, according to the actual situation, regularly and continuously donate drugs to impoverished areas to help them get rid of poverty.

As early as November 16 last year, Health Yuan also joined hands with the Songpan County Health and Family Planning Bureau of Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, to hold a signing ceremony for the health poverty alleviation chronic disease project. According to the person in charge of the Health Yuan Group's health poverty alleviation project, the company will make poverty alleviation work a priority in the future, and will carry out industrial poverty alleviation and chronic disease poverty alleviation projects simultaneously, so as to effectively help economically disadvantaged families with illnesses, make it convenient for patients in minority areas to obtain medicine nearby, and provide timely assistance to low-income people.

Giving a man a fish is not as good as teaching him to fish. While doing a sustained job of health poverty alleviation, Health Yuan has also gradually begun to promote industrial poverty alleviation, hoping to help more poor people escape poverty in a point-to-area approach.

To this end, Health Yuan mentioned in its 2018 semi-annual report that it will explore a new path to enrich the people based on local resources and the development of the characteristic Astragalus industry from the perspective of industrial poverty alleviation, achieving poverty alleviation in situ and promoting the construction of an "ecological Chinese medicine base".

The specific approach is to establish the concept of 'precision poverty alleviation and Astragalus industry', do a good job of 'three combinations' (combining with poverty alleviation policies, industrial development projects, and vocational skills training), adopting the poverty alleviation model of 'company-base-impoverished household', radiating and driving impoverished households to plant and process Astragalus, creating a local Astragalus medicinal material industry in a way that suits local conditions, and forming a long-term and pillar industry for poverty alleviation and wealth creation.

As early as the first half of 2018, Datong Lizhu Qiyuan Medicinal Materials Co., Ltd. (Datong Lizhu), a subsidiary of Lizhu Group, a subsidiary of Health Yuan, employed hundreds of local farmers in its self-built and jointly built bases, and trained the farmers on how to use non-toxic and harmless methods to solve pest problems in Astragalus planting, avoiding losses of 2,000 mu of Astragalus due to pests.

In addition, Health Yuan also plans to achieve comprehensive and stable poverty alleviation for hundreds of people in the three counties of Hunyuan and Tianzhen in Shanxi and Zizhou in Shaanxi through industrial poverty alleviation. In the future, Health Yuan will gradually complete the training of standardized Astragalus planting and processing technologies, create standardized production demonstration bases, include impoverished households in the scope of base construction, and improve the conditions for Astragalus production among the people in impoverished areas.

The specific approach is to sign Astragalus purchase orders with impoverished households. Under the premise of standardized production, after the produced Astragalus meets the enterprise standards, the enterprise will give priority to purchasing the products of impoverished households at a protective price. The so-called protective price refers to the comprehensive consideration of land transfer costs, labor costs, and organic fertilizer costs paid by pharmaceutical companies to farmers, especially labor costs, which need to take into account the local cost of living.

The greatest contribution of Health Yuan's industrial poverty alleviation model is that it has created a point-to-area demonstration effect locally. Health Yuan's series of measures have not only provided sufficient guarantees for the stability of medicinal material prices for local farmers, but also the more advanced planting technologies brought by large pharmaceutical companies have enabled farmers to abandon primitive planting technologies. In addition, the organic certification standards for Chinese medicinal materials implemented by large pharmaceutical companies will also enable farmers to abandon the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, thus ensuring that medicinal materials are pollution-free and residue-free.

Whether it's health poverty alleviation or industry poverty alleviation, the underlying effort must be long-term, practical, and sustainable in order to help the poor achieve permanent poverty alleviation. To this end, Zhu Baoguo, chairman of Health Spring, stated: "Health Spring has integrated its social responsibility work into the group's long-term development strategy—committed to improving the level of social responsibility management, building an internal social responsibility management institution, and formulating a social responsibility development strategy. Health Spring will continue to shoulder its social responsibility as a pharmaceutical company, continue to increase R&D investment in the pharmaceutical field, continue to innovate, fully leverage the group's competitive advantages, continue to lead the upgrade of the greater health industry, and contribute to a 'Healthy China.'"

Thanks to its unique poverty alleviation philosophy and unwavering commitment to poverty alleviation in health poverty alleviation and industry poverty alleviation, Health Spring won the "2018 China Poverty Alleviation Contribution Award" at the "Creating the Future 2018 China Economic Annual Summit" and China Economic Figures Ceremony held in Beijing on December 20, 2018.

Health Spring's representatives stated at the summit, "This honor is just the beginning for Health Spring. In the future, Health Spring will continue to remain true to its original aspirations, adapt to actual conditions, maximize its corporate social responsibility while continuing to innovate its operations, and contribute its utmost to China's precision poverty alleviation."