Medicare system to cover rural residents
( 2001-07-03 14:43 ) (8 )

China has begun setting up a rural medical service system in various localities after the nationwide reform of the medical care system in cities.

The purpose is to ensure that rural residents have an easy access to primary medical and health care services.

In the 1970s, China had a rural collective medical care system in the countryside on the basis of the people's communes, and it played a major role in relieving the shortage of inadequate medicines and medical service in the economically weak countryside. The collective medical service system lost its vigor since the collapse of the people's communes two decades ago.

Moreover, with the improvement in the rural people's living standard, it has become an urgent need to upgrade the medical and health care system in rural areas.

Local medical service systems have been established in some provinces such as Anhui, Zhejiang, Henan, Sichuan, Heilongjiang and Shanxi. Community clinics are available in all the 31 towns of Feixi County in Anhui Province, east China, and all the medical workers have passed professional examinations at varied levels.

Xu Jie, director of Feixi Health Bureau, told Xinhua, "in the county, 85 percent of the pregnant women go to hospital to give birth, medicines for epidemic prevention are hand delivered to every household, and some local diseases such as schistosomiasis and malaria are well under control."

According to officials, the nationwide medical service network mainly based on village clinics and town hospitals calls for strengthened government administration. Nobody without professional training will be allowed to work in the clinics and hospitals, and those who practice medicine without a license will be dealt with according to law.