| The word of Barefoot Doctors has not been well known by the youth today. If one who has experienced the Culture Revolution, however, he must know it. Since 1965, barefoot doctors had swept all over the country within a few years, which gradually formed a large team with a number of millions. They had been seemed as ’the pillar of the cooperative health program" by the majority of farmers, who could be trustworthy, affordable, manageable, useful. During the period of barefoot doctors, they had became critical paramedic personnel who carried farmers’health and disease prevention in rural China. This system had also been highly commended as a model to solve the problem of rural medical and health care in developing countries by WTO. Barefoot doctors appeared in the Culture Revolution and disappeared in the time of great transformation of society after the reform and opening-up policy. As a institutionalized, national movement, barefoot doctors system had the indelible political and ideological stigma. Especially during the Culture Revolution, the political propaganda shaped an selflessness, dedicated moral image. The rendering and depiction of these papers and magazines, to some extent, drove barefoot doctors following the example of moral models, climbing mountains and crossing the river in day and night to provide the basic medical care for masses in remote areas. Barefoot doctors were the productions of the time, and also were productions of politics. But to a greater extent, it was a compromise the government had taken in national conditions of behindhand economic situation and deficiency of the medical resources. Namely, this was the most efficient way to ensure the rural labor forces and the stability of the country which costed least, made full use of abundant manpower resources, and alleviated the extremely deplorable situation in the most at maximum range. This attempt did play a role and made significant progress in the rural where lacked medical resources, such as the disease prevention, the improvement of the sanitation, the implementation of the new delivery methods, the publicity of hygiene knowledge.Nevertheless, objective truth can not be changed by man’s subjective will. In the condition that the economic development was backward and masses could not settle the problem of food and clothing, the attempt, in order to improve the medical and health care situation through peasants themselves shouldering the financing burden in the countryside, was unrealistic. Barefoot doctors, to a certain extent, could provide simple treatment. However, they had accepted so little training that they could not solve the difficulty of treatment for peasants. In some sense, the implementation of Barefoot Doctor System covered the truth that the medical resources were still inadequate in rural. After adopting the reform and "open-door" strategy, society had undergone tremendous change and revolution. Barefoot doctors with political overtones and loe levels of technology had gradually unable to adapt to the development of society. The Barefoot Doctor System that had been hyped and appreciated had been terminated in 1985.Until now, a part of "barefoot doctors" still actively prevent and cure diseases in most rural areas. They who were once barefoot doctors has been more than sixty years of age. The vast countryside has encountered a plight of the succession of the new paramedics to the old ones.In the society with enormous changes of the political circumstance and economic condition, "barefoot doctors" are also facing various social and psychological problems. They have contributed all their lives to the rural public health, and all they want is just a settled life when they are old.Currently, most barefoot doctors are still alive, they are a living rural medical and health history. They are worthy being researched, and they need us to record their happiness and sorrows, gains and losses. Only then can we be more objective and more authentic to restore the historical appearance of" barefoot doctors ". |
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