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Volunteers heal rural poor with free serviceBy: Unknown Providing better, affordable
medical services for China's 800 million farmers is a long-cherished goal
for China. Some young doctors at urban
hospitals in East China's Anhui Province believe they've got a remedy. The doctors volunteer to work in
rural areas. A total of 111 of them have answered the call of the Central
Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Ministry of Health
to pitch in at 24 hospitals in poor towns and villages. The programme,
which began in June 1999, places the doctors in these hospitals for at
least a six-month stint. Since the advent of the
programme, the physicians have performed more than 2,000 operations and
diagnosed nearly 60,000 patients. The volunteers also have given
800 training lectures to more than 10,000 village doctors. "The campaign has brought
convenient and low-cost medical service to farmers, most of whom do not
have access to modern medical services," said Dai Guangqiang,
director of the Health Bureau of Anhui. Despite boasting 80 per cent of
the province's population, the rural areas receive just 20 per cent of the
province's health resources. And
nationwide, urban dwellers, who make up 30 per cent of the population,
enjoy 70 per cent of all medical resources, official statistics indicate. An under-developed economy and a
serious shortage of medical resources have put rural clinics in dire
straits. Hospitals in cities have
attracted most of the country's best medical resources, and farmers
usually have to travel far for better medical service. Treatments are
often too expensive as well. "People here are so short
of money that they always hesitate to see doctors unless they get an acute
or fatal disease, and usually only buy medicine valued at a few yuan,"
Li Ping, a young volunteer working in the clinic of the province's Zaojia
Town in poverty-stricken Changfeng County. The campaign will be extended to
the whole country this year, said Lu Yongzheng, vice-director of the
Chinese Young Volunteers Association. |
