| dc.description.abstract | The Study on the Barefoot Doctors(1966-1976)
Abstract
The barefoot doctors are one of the newly emerged things during the Cultural Revolution. Many newly emerged things were denied later, but the barefoot doctors have various aspects of evaluation. This result is related to the implementation process of the barefoot doctors policy.
Mao Zedong issued the important June 26 Directive to practice medical and health work in rural areas. A large number of urban medical professionals went to the rural areas to train medical personnels. Later on, the investigation report “ Observing the Direction of Medical Education Revolution from the Growth of the Barefoot Doctors” was directed to release on the third issue of the HONGQI magazine by Mao on September 10, 1968, which urged barefoot doctors to emerge in large numbers during the Cultural Revolution. Thereafter, the barefoot doctor became an official name national wide.
The barefoot doctors were selected from the offspring of poor and low-middle peasants with moderate political thinking, high cultural standard, healthy body and passion for sanitation work, and urban youths with high knowledge standard. The commune health stations, the county hospitals, the county health schools and the medical teams from the city conducted the trainings. Various kinds of teaching materials were also compiled. The barefoot doctors learned basic knowledge, common diseases in rural areas, prevention, combination of western and traditional Chinese medical treatments, and political thinking through three to six months’ trainings. They cooperated with the “Cooperative Health” system, engaged themselves in medical and health work that they were able to do, and joined labor production to get salary. Afterwards, they received planned training many times to increase their basic medical knowledge, and to enhance their skills of treating common diseases and accumulate their clinical experience.
The barefoot doctors displayed the functions of combining western and traditional Chinese medical treatments, preventing diseases, providing maternal and child hygiene, shortening the rural-urban disparity…etc. They temporarily helped release the pressure of laggard medical environment in the rural areas and the pastoral areas in remote districts. However, due to their short and hasty training and rough medical equipments, if they don’t operate properly, the patients will lose their basic right of living. Besides, the lack of formal assessing system may lead to the tragedy of treating human life as if it were not worth a straw.
After the end of Cultural Revolution, the barefoot doctors were not denied completely because they fulfilled the tasks of preventing diseases, serving the grass roots and providing the patients mental comfort in the primary medical care work in China in 1960 ~1970 although they were not officially licensed and were not demarcated clearly.
Keywords:
barefoot doctors, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Cultural Revolution, Cooperative Health
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