Peasants Love Chinese Medicine
A Survey in Fujian Shows
Peasants Love Chinese Medicine
Even today, with Western medicine advancing fast, the broad peasantry still trusts Chinese medicine.
A survey report shows that Chinese medicine now occupies an important place in rural health work in Fujian and plays an irreplaceable role.
The survey team questioned 577 peasants in 34 villages of 34 townships in two sample counties who had been ill within the last month and had seen a doctor: 977 visits were to TCM doctors (49.9%) and 981 to Western-medicine doctors (50.1%). The 56 county-level TCM hospitals in Fujian recorded 3.7072 million outpatient visits and 61,200 inpatient admissions, or 37.2% and 13.7% respectively of total visits and admissions at hospitals of the same level. At township health centers in Longhai and Fu'an, Chinese-medicine sales reached 975,800 RMB and 1,231,100 RMB — 25.6% and 37.2% of total drug sales at those centers. In the opinion poll, 89.3% of the peasants surveyed said they hope for higher-quality TCM medical and health services.
Fujian has folded indicators and projects on delivering high-quality, convenient TCM services to peasants into the inspection and assessment system of primary health care under its Tenth Five-Year Plan. One net, many uses — sound and complete rural TCM medical and health-care networks — is the approach. At the same time, construction of county-level TCM hospitals is being strengthened with tiered management to raise overall function. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan, the qualified county-level TCM hospitals will be further consolidated and their content enriched; the last batch of graded TCM hospitals will be built on schedule, aiming to reach their respective grades by the end of 2003.
Excerpted from Health News, February 10, 2001