Medical Aid to Underdeveloped Regions

BIJIE City in Guizhou Province is one of the least developed regions in China. It is home to two dozen ethnic groups including the Yi, Miao, Bai and Gelao.

I started my first job in August 1983 as a medication dispenser at the Dafang County People’s Hospital in Bijie. I have since worked in the county’s public health sector, and am now chief of its health, food and drug administration. It’s safe to say I have first-hand knowledge of the medical aid program sponsored by the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party (CPWDP).

The program is tailor-made for mountainous regions in Bijie, and its patrons include the CPWDP, the China Health and Medical Development Foundation, and the Red Cross Society of China, among other organizations.

The CPWDP is one of the eight political parties in China besides the ruling CPC. The other seven are the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (RCCK), the China Democratic League, the China Democratic National Construction Association (CDNCA), the China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), the China Zhi Gong Party, the Jiu San (September 3) Society and the Taiwan Democratic Self-government League. They participate in the governance of the nation through cooperation and consultation. To signify its commitment to working for the interest of the nation and the wellbeing of the people, the CPWDP named the medical aid program in Bijie “Tongxin,” meaning “one heart, one mind.”

The CPWDP has been funneling assistance to Dafang County since 1994 under a national initiative to spread the reach of organizations, big state-owned enterprises and institutions and better-off regions to underdeveloped areas. Over the past 18 years the CPWDP has funded a number of programs to promote agricultural technologies, train local personnel and improve the teaching excellence of local schools. As the CPWDP is primarily a party of professionals in medical science and public health, medical aid is naturally the priority of the party’s endeavors in Dafang.

I first became personally involved with the CPWDP program in 2010. In October that year, as head of Dafang’s public health bureau I made a field study of the state of the county’s public health, touring more than 300 township hospitals and village clinics in 34 towns and townships around Dafang. I was taken aback again and again by one sight in particular: that of sophisticated medical apparatuses left untouched in the storage rooms of these facilities because the staff – even the head doctors – didn’t know how to operate them. The state of my hometown’s medical sector was appalling, and deeply saddening.

As I fumbled to work out solutions to the problems, the CPWDP reached out to me. After intense discussions, I presented an outline for an upgrade program for local rural hospitals, which was accepted by the CPWDP. The plan started with three medical facilities as a trial run. The CPWDP offered RMB 30,000 for a village clinic and RMB 800,000 for a township hospital to improve infrastructure, train staff and buy equipment. Three months later, CPWDP President Sang Guowei personally inspected the three sites and expressed his satisfaction with the results. The party then agreed to give RMB 50 million in cash and materials in the coming years to better equip and staff local hospitals and facilitate reforms in the county’s medical service sector.

The support of the CPWDP also prompted the local government to increase input in public health. The county government decided to earmark upwards of RMB 10 million each year for public medical care. In August 2011 a demonstrative medical service standardization project kicked off. So far projects on the construction, renovation and expansion of 31 township hospitals and 146 village clinics have been completed, providing them with 1,886 items of medical equipment and training for 1,281 staff.

In light of the range of common diseases in the region, the county has added X-ray machines, ultrasonogram machines, automated blood analyzers, infusion chairs and urine analyzers to rural medical providers’ arsenal, which formerly consisted of the “primitive” trio – stethoscopes, blood-pressure meters and thermometers.

Once better equipped and staffed, township hospitals were able to set up family health archives for residents in their townships. The new service was welcomed by farmers. On farmers’ market days, they would flock to the closest township hospitals for free checks. Some hospitals received about 200 people in a single day – significantly more than usual. For villagers with conditions that prevented them from making the trip to a hospital, doctors were sent to their homes and reported back on their conditions. Once a township hospital established a database of their area, it selected those with hypertension, diabetes and other chronic diseases to be put on a regular monitoring and home-visit system, preventing their conditions from worsening.

We also beefed up traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) at rural hospitals. TCM therapies like acupuncture, massage and cupping are very popular among average Chinese and are effective for some common conditions in mountainous areas, including rheumatism, gastroenterological disorders and respiration problems.

Seeing that poor transport in mountainous areas impeded local communities’ access to medical services, the CPWDP donated 18 vehicles to serve as mobile hospitals and trained 171 first-aid workers. The cost of these initiatives added up to RMB 5.51 million. The provincial government also dispensed 12 similar vehicles, and the two lots are now serving 28 township hospitals across Dafang.

Medical services are really about the practitioners, not machines. With this awareness we worked out training plans to meet the county’s immediate, medium- and long-term needs. The goal is to tackle the most urgent problems while fostering sustainable growth of the medical care sector in terms of human resources. The CPWDP sent volunteers to offer regular, concise training for local medical workers. It also put rural hospitals in Dafang in touch with bigger ones in developed regions such as Shanghai and Tianjin, and helped form exchange programs between them. These efforts have significantly improved the abilities of local medical workers. I have personally witnessed the dramatic change the Tongxin Program has brought to public health in Dafang. This change has also been acknowledged by visiting officials and experts from other parts of the country. Observers who had been to the county earlier called the changes “seismic,” and were impressed by our potential for further improvement. As a native and a local official I am proud to hear from patients that services at their hospitals are getting better and better. For all this progress we owe much to the generous help of the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party.