The Republic Of The Immunization Policy (1911-1937)

During the Period of the Republic of China, the wars and disasters resulted in frequently wide spreading pestilences with big scale, various kinds, large number of death and serious social implications, which seldom happened in the history. Not only did pestilences harm people's lives and health and brought social chaos, they also hampered the development of politics, economy, military, and culture, which was a social problem that government had to deal with.In order to stop pestilences from spreading, the national government adopted active policies and measurements to set up special sanitation and epidemic prevention agencies, research centers, hospitals, etc., gave away injections actively, formed epidemic diseases reporting system, improved civil construction and public sanitation, made detailed epidemic prevention laws, enhanced medicine education and publicity, encouraged the establishment and development of charity and medical research groups, through which the sanitation and epidemic prevention during that period was approaching modernization and the governmental control of epidemic diseases was greatly strengthened.Accompanied with the development of social situation in the Republic of China era, the policies of epidemic prevention during this period present the following special features. Firstly, the national government was keen on the epidemic prevention establishment, gradually setting up a modern system ranging from center to regional areas. Secondly, the development of epidemic prevention in modern times of China started relatively late with the medical technologies on a low level. Thirdly, the phenomena that epidemic prevention mainly focused on the urban areas but the rural, that on treatment rather than prevention was common. Furthermore, there were lacks of consistence of policies and medical budgetary resources. Additionally, there was an increase of international cooperation in epidemic prevention.Despite the major social forces involved, the government played the dominated role in epidemic prevention, which stopped diseases from spreading efficiently, advanced the development of sanitation and medicine, improved the legislation of...