Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made a three-day inspection in East China’s Zhejiang province, which ended on May 22.

Sun visited several medical institutes including Hangzhou Women’s Hospital and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University. She stressed the key role of the prevention of disease in furthering the reform of public hospitals and spoke highly of the progress the province has made as a pilot region in the reform. In addition, she asked for efforts to bring high-quality medical resources closer to communities.

Inflated prices of medicine and medical facilities should be cut through measures such as centralized medicine procurement and price negotiations, in order to reduce the people’s burden, she said.

During the inspection, Sun also visited Zhejiang Education Examinations Authority and attended a symposium on the reform of “gaokao”, or the national college entrance exam, in Zhejiang, which is a pilot province for the reform.

Sun pointed out that the content of the exam should be optimized to better test the students’ overall qualities and abilities, while elementary education and the reform of “gaokao” should be jointly pushed forward.