Society

Nurturing healthcare in rural areas

By Shan Juan and Fu Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-22 12:06

BEIJING - San Yulong was born in 2005 to a rural family in Hendu, a mountainous village in Liming township in Yulong county. The area is part of the Lisu ethnic group village in Southeast China's Yunnan province.

The boy was named after the county, with "San" also meaning "three".

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"We named him after that to remember the difficult delivery his mother had for him," the boy's father said.

San's mother, Feng Lizhi, suffered complications during his birth and was sent to three different local hospitals. She finally gave birth to the boy in the county, San's father said.

Despite the long and difficult journey to San's birth, Feng is still grateful to Xiong Fang, the village's "health communicator".

Xiong was hired by the local health administration in 2000 to promote hospital births and reduce maternal deaths in an area where women have long chosen to give birth at home, largely because they want to save money and avoid long trips to the hospital.

In San Yulong's case, the nearest hospital was 15 km away from his home.

In 2000, the Ministry of Health launched a nationwide initiative to subsidize and promote hospital births, particularly among rural pregnant women.

That is also part of China's commitment to reduce the maternal mortality rate, one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the 192 United Nation member states and 23 international organizations have set out to achieve by 2015.

Thanks to the project, about 96 per cent of pregnant women are now able to give birth in hospitals, a ministry statement said on Monday.

China has also reduced its maternal mortality rate to 31.9 deaths per 100,000, down 66 percent over 1990, official statistics showed.

The mortality rate for children aged under 5 in the country has also been reduced by nearly 72 percent to the current level of 1.72 deaths per 100,000 over the past 20 years, the ministry said.

Yin Yin Nwe, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative in China, said she was happy to see that the Chinese government subsidized rural women who gave birth at hospitals and provided them with maternal healthcare.

"That is an outstanding achievement worldwide," said Zhu Jun, who specializes in women and children's health at the Chengdu-based Sichuan University's West China Center of Medical Science.

Internationally, the total number of deaths of children aged under 5 has fallen by one-third in the past two decades, the UNICEF said.

"Based on the current situation, China is likely to achieve the health-related targets in MDGs," the ministry's statement said.

The targets include reducing the child mortality rate, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Some of the MDG targets for health like those involving the mortality rate of children aged under 5 and malaria control have already been achieved in China, Zhu said.

But Wang Linhong, deputy director of the national center for women and children's health at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that in some rural areas in West China, about 30 to 50 percent of women still cannot receive early antenatal and delivery care in health institutions.

Wang is responsible for the implementation of the MDG targets that aim to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health.

However, China is still facing challenges in meeting other goals, according to the health ministry statement.

Burdened by a rise in chronic illnesses and infectious diseases, the task of reversing the spread of major infections like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis by 2015 faces challenges, it said.

About 350,000 people were living with HIV/AIDS in China by June alone, latest official statistics showed.