Highlights
'Bare-foot docs' bring gift of life to child vaccination
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-20 13:36
BEIJING: Guo Hong is a doctorate student in computer science -- but to his parents, he's just "Doggy."
It's a nickname that's given the 26-year-old cause to cringe over the years. "It embarrassed me when my parents called me that in front of my girlfriend."
In rural China, parents have traditionally called their newborns inappropriate names, such as Doggy, Smelly or Fool, in the belief that it will confer long life and deter evil spirits from haunting their offspring.
When People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, one in five children died before their fifth birthday, according to a progress report by the Ministry of Health.
But these days, the necessity for crude nicknames is receding.
According to "The State of the World Children 2009" report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the under-5 mortality rate in China was down to 22 per 1,000 in 2007.
The rate of children who die before the age of 5 is a major indicator of child health, as well as a measure of progress in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Dr Robert Scherpbier, medical officer in the Maternal and Child Health unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) China, says the WHO believes that China's under-5 mortality rate is among the lowest in the western Pacific region.
One of the main reasons for this is the immunization program launched by Chinese government in 1978, which has seen China's children immunized against five communicable diseases -- measles, polio, tuberculosis, tetanus, pertusis (whooping cough) and diphtheria -- all major threats to child survival.
"China's expanded program on immunization (EPI) is the largest in the world. It targets a birth cohort of 16 million children," says Scherpbier.
However, progress is uneven. Dr Yin Yin Nwe, UNICEF representative to China, said in March that infant and child mortality was almost 2.7 times higher in the western than eastern regions, 2.4 times higher in rural than urban areas, and five times higher in the poorest rural counties than in large cities.
The poorest rural counties are in dire want of health facilities, health professionals, and sound hygiene practice. Some remote and mountainous areas are inaccessible to modern transport.
In such places, it's the so-called "bare-foot doctors" who take vaccines to each rural household with children.
"Bare-foot doctors" are village-level medical workers who usually do not have professional training. Mostly without clinics, they travel their areas on foot -- hence the name bare-foot doctors -- making housecalls.
Bare-foot doctor Yang Zheng'e, 46, is a specialist in maternal and child health in the clinic of Jiarong Township, Huishui County, of the southwestern Guizhou Province.
In 1987, Yang became the only maternal health specialist in the township with a population of 15,000 in 3,000 households. The township was poverty-stricken, with annual per capita GDP of 2,398 yuan (US$351). Her salary was 38 yuan per month then.
She began practicing after being trained for a year in nursing school where she learned the basics of medicine from scratch.
The 3,000 households are scattered in a mountainous area of 98 square kilometers. It takes her four to five hours walking, including crossing several streams, to reach the farthest household.
"The shoes I've worn out were countless." she says.
