Health Care Flashcards
What was public health provision like in China?
Extreeemely rudimentary
Health care in rural China?
• Practically non-existent:
-many peasants had never seen a trained doctor, 👨🏼⚕️⁉️
-preferred to rely on ancient herbal cures to heal ☘️👨🏽🌾🏮🔮
• VERGE OF STARVATION= many Chinese peasants= immune systems easily succumbed to epidemics: waterborne diseases (eg. Typhoid, cholera, dysentery) rife. 🌊🤮
• IGNORANCE played a part: human manure was the main fertiliser💩🥕
What were the bare foot doctors?
Mao introduced the system: paramedics sent to rural areas to provide basic care to the peasants.
Trained intensively for JUST 6 MONTHS— cheap to train, mainly focused on practical skills:
- improving hygiene
- stopping the spread of disease
- contraception
How effective were the barefoot doctors?
❌ only RUDIMENTARY health care
❌ village clinics had little equipment, low SUPPLIES of medicine
❌ barely trained students YET often the ONLY SOURCE of medical care in the village!
✅ during Mao’s rule, many people treated by a trained doctor for the FIRST time
✅ helped to EDUCATE peasants in modern health ideas
✅ by 1973: over a million NEW doctors had been trained
What were the successes of health care reform?
Patriotic Health Movements
• CCP launched Patriotic Health Movements—
Party members sent into countryside to educate peasants in PREVENTION of illness: ✂️
• POSTERS for the illiterate on:
- how to catch rats & mosquitoes 🐀
- how to dig deep wells for drinking water 💦
- pointing out importance of personal hygiene🍏 (use of human waste as fertiliser discouraged) 💩☹️
What were the successes of health care reform?
- villages mobilised in collective efforts to drain swamps that bred malaria
- smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, typhus, plague, leprosy were practically eliminated.
- cases of tuberculosis and parasitic diseases (eg. schistosomiasis) reduced
- life expectancy rose
- infant mortality fell
- Anti-drug campaigns greatly reduced the sale and use of opium
What were the failures of health care reform?
• still v UNEVEN provision between rural n urban.
Western-style hospitals? Centred in the cities only.
Health care in rural areas or isolated peasant communities? Inadequate.
• GREAT LEAP FORWARD: communes established medical clinics BUT terrible impact of the famine negated the health benefits
• ANTIS campaigns of the 50s—> many doctors attacked, sent to laogai
• CULTURAL REVOLUTION— doctors denounced. Some cancelled operations, choosing to undertake manual labour (eg cleaning toilets) to show they didn’t believe themselves to be superior.
