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Volunteers Heal Rural Poor with Free Medical Help
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 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 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 are 30 per cent of the population, enjoy 70 per cent of all medical resources, official statistics indicate.
Inadequate measures, 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 volunteers are warm-hearted, able-minded and give effective prescriptions with reasonable prices, which have greatly benefited us,'' said Zhou Lihu, a villager of the county.
The campaign will be extended to the whole country this year, said Lu Yongzheng, vice-director of the Chinese Young Volunteers Association.
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