Study Of People's Commune Period Of Rural Cooperative Medical System

The Cooperative Medical System in countryside during People Commune Period is a collective medical care system with production brigade as basic unit, which is based on fund-raising by both production brigade, production team and team members. The system came into being in late 1950s after the Campaign of Communization of People. Later it boomed as a result of affirmation and advocacy of Mao Ze Dong and reached its peak in mid or late 1970s. It improved the poor situation that countryside lacked medical staff and medication and then was written as a regulation in Constitution in 1978. Cooperative Medical System was not only popular with farmers in China but highly praised abroad. In early 1980s, with the adjustment of economic policies in countryside and disassembly of People Community, medical team suffered from brain drain and medical office of production team lost its principal capital source. Therefore, cooperative medical care system ceased to exist. Up to now, detailed regional study on this matter is inadequate as far as academe is concerned. Hence, with Shen Ze County as a case , this paper gives a microcosmic study on the construction and popularization of this system.Cooperative Medical System mainly comprises three aspects: Organization, Medical team, origin and use of Fund. Organizational system of Shen Ze County includes Cooperative Medical Office of Board of Health of Shen Ze County, Cooperative Medical Station of People Community, Medical Chamber of Production Team in addition to Administrative Committee of Poor farmers established to supervise the work. Cooperative medical system was mainly production-brigade-related, but later part of it developed into community-brigade cooperative form. Medical staff mainly included unlicensed doctors, assistants and midwives, whose source, capability, training and salary are typical of that epoch. Its capital roughly comprised of fund-raising of production brigade, production team and individual farmers supplemented by planting and making Chinese traditional medicine. A modest sum of money is the material basis of Cooperative Medical System, whose quantity decides the ebb and flow of the system.The major mission of Cooperative Medical System in the countryside included medical propaganda campaign, medical treatment, supervision of patriotic sanitation movement, vaccination, Chinese traditional medicine plucking, planting, making and using, medical care of women and children, delivering of babies in new ways, etc. Among them, prevention and treatment of diseases was its primary job. Following the...