The 15th World Congress of Arrhythmias was held in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 15th World Congress of Arrhythmias was held in Beijing from Sept 17-19, with cardiologists talking about their experiences at more than 300 seminars of the event, which was hosted on the Chinese mainland for the first time since it began in 1963. The summit is held once in every four years.

The country has more than 20 million patients of cardiac arrhythmias or irregular heartbeat, and about 544,000 Chinese die every year due to sudden cardiac failure, according to Zhang Shu, a doctor treating arrhythmia at Beijing Fuwai Hospital.

Only 1 percent of such heart-attack cases can be saved, Zhang said at the meeting.

That is partly because of the expensive costs involved in implanting pacemakers and other treatment devices, and also because many hospitals lack the infrastructure and physicians to adopt such device-based treatment and procedures, Zhang said.

Only 7 percent of China's hospitals are able to conduct implantation of pacemakers, let alone more complicated procedures to treat cardiac problems.

Recently, Chinese Medical Association and Chinese Medical Doctor Association, two government bodies, jointly launched a nationwide program to train doctors in rural areas to better deal with cardiac problems among their patients. Eight hospitals in eastern China's Jiangsu province have so far been covered by the program that is expected to spread to some 100 counties in the near future.