With arguably the largest incidence of rare disease, authors of an article published in the Intractable Rare Disease Research discuss the magnitude of the challenges the Chinese are faced with to manage their burden of rare diseases. According to the authors, despite the magnitude there is much promise due the social support available to patients and the push towards educating government bodies and clinicians. The authors believe that with the advent of next generation sequencing, especially non-invasive prenatal testing, there is a possibility of reducing the number of individuals with rare genetic diseases over time. The key according to them is to develop cost-effective treatments backed by government subsidies.
