China's Changing Disease Pattern and Epidemiologic Transition

Abstract

The article traces changes in the structure of morbidity and mortality in rural and urban areas of China in the period 1949 to the present. It particularly emphasizes the transition from prevalence of acute infectious diseases like respiratory diseases, TB and diarrheal diseases in the early years of the PRC to the present preponderance of chronic degenerative diseases like heart diseases, strokes and cancers. However, present-day China, not having completed the epidemiologic transition, continues to be plagued with lingering problems and comebacks of certain acute infectious diseases.