Research On Maternal And Child Health In Nanjing Area In The 1950s

Women are the important force of national construction,infants are the vitality of the country,and "the health of women is not just aproblem of a group of people,it involves family planning,population control,future population health,socio-economic development,and other major issues".Therefore,the health of woman&infants has always been the concern of various governments.Maternal and child health care workwas one of the primary tasks of national construction in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China,and it was also one of the events that marked the first contact between new governmentand the general public,whichwas of great value to investigate the elastic space of the implementation of decree in the political environment in the 1950s.The writing under the traditional historical view is difficult to break through the two modes of discussion of "historical view of elite" and"grandiose narration",which has difficulty in objectively and comprehensively showing the real life picture of the masses.Most of the researches on maternal and child health care work in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China stuck in the description and analysis of the policy,which lacked the detailed investigation and evaluation on social practice.Therefore,the readers knew little about the actual situation of the grassroots maternal and child health care work.In this paper,by focusing on the historical process of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing in the 1950s,taking archival materials and local chronicles compilation as first-hand information,historical journals and newspapers and periodicals as supplement,andresearch results of relevant papers and monographs as reference,and applying empirical research methods and data statistical methods,based on the historical materialist point of view,and through the comprehensive use of historical and sociological theory,the author investigated the specific implementation situation of maternal and child health carework in Nanjing in the 1950s,analyzed the stage characteristics of maternal and child health care work presented in different times,comprehensively evaluated the gains and losses of maternal and child health care network construction,as well as the major impact of maternal and child health care network construction on social development.Therelevant issues were elaborated in three chapters in this paper.Chapter I mainly introduced the origin of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing in the 1950s.This chapter started from three aspects to explore the historical basis of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing.(1)As the capital of the Republic of China,Nanjing had carried out maternal and child health care work earlier,having a certain historical basis and work experience.(2)In the revolutionary war era,the Chinese Communist Party also introduced a series of policiesthatconcerned about women's rights and maternal and child health care work in various bases.In the 1950s,a series of maternal and child health care work carried out in Nanjing and its surrounding suburbscontinued to extend the policy applied in era of revolutionary bases in varying degrees.(3)The maternal and child health care policies and practices of the Soviet Union,the "big brother" of socialist camp,played an exemplary role in the implementation of maternal and child health care work in China in the 1950s,and some practices were directly imitated by China.Finally,through analysis and research on the severe fertility status,population structure,and labor demand in China,the author explored the necessity and urgency of carrying out maternal and child health care work.Chapter ? mainly discussed the development of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing area in the 1950s.As the main part of the paper,this chapter was divided into three sections.In Section ?,firstly,the author introduced the status quo of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing area before and after liberation,analyzed the medical resources and fertility status,and presented the implementation basis of maternal and child health care work and the urgency of developing maternal and child health care work;secondly,the author divided the relevant work into two stages on the whole according to the actual situation of the maternal and child health work in the 1950s and summarized the different guiding ideology and work focus in the two stages.Section ? elaborated the maternal and child health work in Nanjing area during May 1949-1952.As the main body mentioned,the municipal,district,and county government established three-level health administrative agencies in order to lead maternal and child health care work;meanwhile,the government followed up taking over and increasing medical institutions at all levels to make municipal,district,and county professional medical institutions serve people better.The key point in this phase was clinical medicine mostly,including(1)implementing intensive professional and technical training to ensure first-line midwives to get rid of superstition,abandon bad habits,and replace traditional delivery method with new-method delivery.(2)transferring professionals from urban large and medium-sized hospitals to carry out propaganda and instruction of maternal and child health care in suburban counties.(3)vigorously promoting spiritual painless childbirth technology to reduce maternal childbirth pain.Section III elaborated maternal and child health work in Nanjing area during 1952-1959.In this phase,maternal and child health care work in Nanjing area achieved major development with the focus on preventive medicine,paying attention to comprehensive and holistic work.Provincial health administrative agency was set up and municipal-and county-level health administrative agencies were adjusted for more smoothly work.At the same time,all levels of medical professional institutions were adjusted and enriched with gradual increase of maternal and child health care institutions,further expanding the scale and service scope.The main work in this phase involved strengthening the management of the delivery team,further popularizing new-method delivery,consolidating and enriching maternal and child health care network,carrying out general screening and treatment of gynecological diseases,legislating to protect the health of working women,and strengthening pregnancy care,prenatal care,postnatal care,lactation care,etc.The main content of Chapter ? was to analyze the achievements and shortcomings of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing in the 1950s.This paper pointed out that the achievements at that time were unquestionable.The establishment of the three-level maternal and child health care network covering urban and rural areas,popularization of new-methoddelivery,significant reduction of maternal and child mortality,remarkable improvement in the health status of working women,increase in professional skill of health care workers,and the improvement in medical and health conditions in urban and rural areas,and othersall fully demonstrated the performance of maternal and child health care work at this stage.However,due to the influence of some subjective and objective factors,there were still a significant gap between the related work and the expected target at this stage.The specific performance includes:(1)due to long-term war damage and economic depression before,national financial resources were limited at that time so that the implementation of maternal and child health care work in Nanjing in the 1950slacked strong support of national finance,which inevitably seriously affected the depth,breadth,and speed of relevant work;(2)in order to make up for the shortcomings of capital and resources,maternal and child health care work can be only carried out through social mobilization and mass movement,resulting in the prevalence of "perfunctoriness" and "falsehood,big words,and malarky";(3)at the later stage,with the development of industrial and agricultural production,the majority of women also became the labor force successively.In the face of pressing economic construction,the importance of women health care on the agendaof governmentat all levels was declining,making many maternal and child health care measures nominal.