BEIJING -- Premier Li Keqiang has stressed the need to reduce the burden that people face in receiving medical treatment, and to advance medical reforms.

Efforts should be accelerated to ensure that high-quality medical resources become more broadly available and are distributed in a more balanced manner, Li said in an instruction to a national teleconference on medical reform held in Beijing on Thursday.

Medical institutions are obliged to meet people's basic needs for medical treatment, and shall not deny care to patients in emergency or critical conditions, said Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

Li said that measures shall be implemented continuously to benefit the people and ease the burden they face in receiving medical treatment, and that reforms shall be promoted towards the high-quality development of public hospitals.

Li also demanded further advancing the Healthy China initiative, developing traditional Chinese medicine, building up the ranks of rural doctors, and carrying out science-based and targeted measures to contain the epidemic, so as to safeguard people's health and promote economic and social development.

Vice Premier Sun Chunlan attended and addressed the teleconference.

Sun called for continued efforts to build regional centers for medical services and medical research, improve the management of medical consortiums, strengthen the community-level medical and health institutions, and establish a tiered diagnosis and treatment system.

She also stressed the strict implementation of the newly-updated COVID-19 control protocol to ensure that the economy and people's work and lives are less affected.