Home > Public health in the People's Republic of China
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the goal of health programs has been to provide care to every member of the population and to make maximum use of limited health-care personnel, equipment, and financial resources. The emphasis has been on preventive rather than curative medicine on the premise that preventive medicine is "active" while curative medicine is "passive." The health-care system has dramatically improved the health of the people.1 Traditional And Modern
China has one of the longest historical medicine records of any existing civilization. And with new technologies health care is undergoing a new revitalization, while at the same time traditional approaches are being re-authenticated.
2 Primary Support
After 1949 the Ministry of Public Health was responsible for all health-care activities and established and supervised all facets of health policy. Along with a system of national, provincial, and local facilities, the ministry regulated a network of industrial and state enterprise hospitals and other facilities covering the health needs of workers of those enterprises. In 1981 this additional network provided approximately 25 percent of the country's total health services.
Health care was provided in both rural and urban areas through a three-tiered system. In rural areas the first tier was made up of barefoot doctors working out of village medical centers. They provided preventive and primary-care services, with an average of two doctors per 1,000 people. At the next level were the township health centers, which functioned primarily as out-patient clinics for about 10,000 to 30,000 people each. These centers had about ten to thirty beds each, and the most qualified members of the staff were assistant doctors. The two lower-level tiers made up the "rural collective health system" that provided most of the country's medical care. Only the most seriously ill patients were referred to the third and final tier, the county hospitals, which served 200,000 to 600,000 people each and were staffed by senior doctors who held degrees from 5-year medical schools. Health care in urban areas was provided by paramedical personnel assigned to factories and neighborhood health stations. If more professional care was necessary the patient was sent to a district hospital, and the most serious cases were handled by municipal hospitals. To ensure a higher level of care, a number of state enterprises and government agencies sent their employees directly to district or municipal hospitals, circumventing the paramedical, or barefoot doctor, stage.
3 1950s
An emphasis on public health and preventive treatment characterized health policy from the beginning of the 1950s. At that time the party began to mobilize the population to engage in mass "patriotic health campaigns" aimed at improving the low level of environmental sanitation and hygiene and attacking certain diseases. One of the best examples of this approach was the mass assaults on the "four pests"— rats, sparrowFor the Sparrow air-to-air missile, see AIM-7 Sparrow . Passer Petronia Carpospiza Montifringilla This article is about the Old World sparrows in the family Passeridae . The closely related finches of the equatorial regions and Australasia are often alsos, fliesThis article is about the insect. For other meanings, see Fly (disambiguation A fly (plural flies is any species of insect of the order Diptera, some of which can land on food and transmit bacteria to humans. Particularly the housefly Musca domestica is c, and mosquitoThis article is about the insect; for the WWII aircraft see De Havilland Mosquito. See text. Mosquitoes are insects belonging to the order Diptera; genera include Anopheles Culex Psorophora Ochlerotatus Aedes Sabethes Wyeomyia Culiseta and Haemagoggus fores—and on schistosomaPart of the class Trematoda, Schistosoma commonly known as the blood-fluke is "the most important human parasite from a world health perspective" (Gilbertson 1999). It has four main species: Schistosoma mansoni or else known as Manson's blood fluke or swa-carrying snailThe name snail applies to most members of the molluscan Class Gastropoda that have coiled shells. Other gastropods, which lack a conspicuous shell, are commonly called slugs, and are scattered throughout groups that primarily include snails. Snails are fos. Particular efforts were devoted in the health campaigns to improving water qualityTo most people not professionally involved in water quality issues, water is either drinkable (technically potable or contains potentially harmful or toxic substances. However, the vast majority of surface water on the planet is neither potable nor toxic. through such measures as deep- wellA well is an artificial boring in the earth through which water, oil or gas can be obtained. This article discusses water wells. For information on oil or gas wells, the article oil well should be consulted. Different types of water well Two classes may b construction and human- waste treatmentSewage treatment is the process that removes the majority of the contaminants from sewage and produces an liquid effluent suitable for disposal to the natural environment and also produces a sludge. Historical sewage treatment As recently as 100 years ago. Only in the larger cities had human waste been centrally disposed. In the countryside, where "night soil" has always been collected and applied to the fields as fertilizer, it was a major source of disease. Since the 1950s, rudimentary treatments such as storage in pits, composting, and mixture with chemicals have been implemented.
