The Barefoot Doctors of the People's Republic of China

Abstract

China's rural people, who comprise 80 per cent of its population, have in the past been served by grossly inadequate numbers of health-care personnel. Rural medical services were massively expanded as a result of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which began in 1965. As part of this expansion, agricultural workers are trained to meet rural needs for environmental sanitation, health education, immunization, first aid, and some aspects of primary care and post-illness follow-up; there are now said to be over a million such "bare-foot doctors." Their formal training period is brief, and continued on-the-job education is stressed. Analogous health workers include "worker doctors" in China's factories and "Red Guard doctors," who are housewives serving as physicians' assistants in urban neighborhood health stations. The development of these categories of workers and their training illustrate some of the principles on which current Chinese health services are based.