China’s ambitious $124-billion effort to provide basic health coverage for the vast majority of its 1.3 billion citizens by 2011 is a brimming opportunity for global pharmaceutical companies.

As growth in the US and European markets remains sluggish, many giant pharmaceutical companies are expanding their sales forces, distribution channels and research operations in China to tap into the country’s robust drug market.

China’s drug market is expected to grow about 22 percent annually over the next five years, said Mandy Chui, senior principal of (Intercontinental Marketing Services) IMS Health Inc.

Chui is the China expert at IMS Health, which provides market data on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

“We see companies continuing to invest in China because the other markets are not growing,” Chui said. “For companies, (China’s growth) is certainly a good story to tell to Wall Street, right?”

With a huge and aging population, rapid urbanization and adoption of Western lifestyles that give rise to hypertension, obesity and other diseases, China is poised to become the world’s third-biggest pharmaceutical market by 2013, up from its current No 5 spot, said Chui.

The $24.5-billion market is expected to swell to betweem $68 billion and $78 billion by 2013, Chui said, leaving it behind only the US and Japan.

“China is taking over from Germany and France,” she said.

“It’s like a big wake-up call. If they (big pharmaceutical companies) are not in there at this point in time, all of them are not going to grow,” Chui said.

In the race to penetrate the Chinese market, she said European drug makers such as Bayer AG, AstraZeneca PLC and Sanofi-Aventis SA have taken the lead.

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