By GSK 

Executive Summary

China is now in the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan—a critical period for accelerating the construction of a Healthy China. On the one hand, accelerated ageing, compounded by challenges from chronic diseases and major infectious diseases, has led to sustained growth in healthcare demand and mounting pressure on medical insurance fund revenues and expenditures. Concurrently, the “Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development” 3explicitly advocates “investing in people,” emphasising that “health and population foundations underpin high-quality development”. This highlights the integration of health within the broader socio-economic development agenda, positioning the enhancement of population quality as a cornerstone for sustaining national competitiveness in the long term.

Against this backdrop, the healthcare system urgently requires a transformation from a treatment-centric approach to one prioritising prevention and centred on health. Population ageing alongside the persistent burden of chronic and infectiousdiseases renders the traditional model—heavily reliant on reactive disease management and cost containment—unsustainable. The imperative is clear: intervention must be moved upstream—shifting from reactive treatment to proactive health management.

Achieving this strategic transformation requires accelerating the establishment of a modern three-tier prevention system covering all populations throughout their entire lifespans. This will be underpinned by reforms integrating medical and preventive services, technological innovation, and optimised healthcare delivery models. By protecting health capital, interrupting disease progression at an early stage, and restoring functional capacity, healthcare resources will shift focus from reactive treatment following disease onset towards risk identification, proactive screening, and long-term management. This marks a systemic upgrade from disease prevention towards comprehensive health promotion.

This transformation will not only mitigate the structural growth of future healthcare expenditure but also extend healthy life expectancy, enhance labour supply, alleviate household economic and care burdens, and lay the health and demographic foundations for developing new productive forces. At its core, this means redefining healthcare spending: no longer as a cost to be contained, but as a strategic, foundational investment in people’s health, population quality, and long-term societal returns.

Breakthroughs in major disease areas can provide critical validation for the valuebased investment paradigm under the Health-First Strategy. Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) exemplifies this profile. It bears the dual characteristics of a major infectious disease and a chronic condition. With an estimated 75 million HBV carriers in China—predominantly aged 30–55—the disease burden is substantial: HBV accounts for 71% of cirrhosis cases and 84% of HCC cases , imposing significantfiscal pressure on both the healthcare system and affected households. Current standard-of-care nucleos(t)ide analogues require lifelong treatment and achieve functional cure—defined as sustained undetectable HBsAg and HBV DNA after a finite course of treatment—in only ~1% of patients. With recent scientific breakthroughs, moving hepatitis B from ‘long-term suppression’ to ‘functional cure’ is now clinically feasible, presenting a high-value application scenario with significant policy demonstration value.

Functional cure not only substantially reduces risks of end-stage diseases like cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), lowers patients’ lifetime treatment costs, enhances workforce productivity, alleviates household burdens, and promotes social equity, but also drives improvements in diagnostic standards and industrial innovation. It provides a verifiable, replicable model for value-based transformation within healthcare systems.

The China Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Viral Hepatitis (2025– 2030)  has, for the first time within a national special prevention and control plan, explicitly advocated for the active development of innovative approaches towards achieving functional cure for hepatitis B. Building upon this foundation, this paper proposes a systematic approach encompassing medical-preventive integration, accelerated regulatory approval, health insurance coverage, innovative payment models, and shifts in public perception. By establishing a policy chain that bridgesprevention, treatment, and payment mechanisms, it aims to accelerate the faster, more standardised, and sustainable delivery of innovative medicines to patients. This initiative will support the accumulation of health capital, thereby driving improvements in population quality and fostering high-quality socioeconomic development in China.

Download the full report：From Passive Treatment to Active Health: How Functional Cure of Hepatitis B can Drive Health-First Value Transformation