BEIJING, Aug 8 (APP): People’s average life span in northwest  China’s Xinjiang region has more than doubled in the past 60 years, a regional health official has said in regional capital Urumqi. In 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded, average life  expectancy was 31 years. Today it is 71 years, said Memet Yasin, head of the regional health bureau.

“The residents are living longer because they have received better  medical treatment during the past 60 years,” he said Friday, noting that progress had been “especially remarkable” in rural areas.

Since the the PRC’s foundating, infant mortality rate has slumped from 42‑60 percent to 1 percent.

“There were only 54 township clinics in the region before 1949, and  varieties of vicious infections were prevalent,” Yasin said. “By the end of 2008, there were 6,739 health agencies in Xinjiang with a total of 97,000 hospital beds.”