Barefoot doctors

Barefoot doctors (Chinese: 赤脚医生; pinyin: chìjiǎo yīshēng) are farmers who received minimal basic medical and paramedical training and worked in rural villages in the People's Republic of China. Their purpose was to bring health care to rural areas where urban-trained doctors would not settle. They promoted basic hygiene, preventive health care, and family planning and treated common illnesses. The name comes from southern farmers, who would often work barefoot in the rice paddies.

In the 1930s, the Rural Reconstruction Movement had pioneered village health workers trained in basic health as part of a coordinated system, and there had been provincial experiments after 1949, but after Mao Zedong's healthcare speech in 1965 the concept was developed and institutionalized. In his speech, Mao Zedong criticized the urban bias of the medical system of the time, and called for a system with greater focus on the well being of the rural population. China's health policy changed quickly after this speech and in 1968, the barefoot doctors program became integrated into national policy. These programs were called "rural cooperative medical systems" (RCMS) and strove to include community participation with the rural provision of health services. Barefoot doctors became a part of the Cultural Revolution, which also radically diminished the influence of the Weishengbu, China's health ministry, which was dominated by Western-trained doctors.

The barefoot doctors usually graduated from secondary school and then received about six months of training at a county or community hospital, though training length varied from a few months to one and a half years. Training was focused on epidemic disease prevention, curing simple ailments that were common in the specific area, and were trained to use Western medicines and techniques. An important part of the Cultural Revolution was the movement of sending intellectuals, and in this case doctors, to serve in the countryside (Chinese: 下鄉 pinyin:xìa xiāng). They would live in an area for half a year to a year and continue the education of the barefoot doctors. About a fifth of the barefoot doctors later entered medical school.

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