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Barefoot Doctors In China Case Study

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Ten years after the Cultural Revolution, the national policy produced an estimated 1 million barefoot doctors in China. Heath outcomes such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy improved intensely. For example, the infant mortality rate dropped from 265 to 67 per 1000 live births and life expectancy more than doubled, from 31 years to 67 years from 1950 to 1982 (10). Despite working with limited resources and technology, the “Barefoot Doctors” program addressed the issue of inadequate manpower, improved the health of China’s population at a low cost and in a short amount of time, and provided timely treatment to the people living in rural areas (8). The three-tier health network was made possible by the CMS and not only played a major role in improving health outcomes in China, but also solved the problem of unequal distribution of health care resources between the urban and rural areas (10). Additionally, since the barefoot doctors were local people who had ties to the community and to the patients, their modest compensation allowed the community to not only train them and but gave the patients easy accessibility to their services and avoided unnecessary expensive hospital care (12). …show more content…

In 1975 an estimated 84.6% of the rural Chinese population was covered by the system but by 1985, only 39.9% was covered (14). The decline of the CMS resulted in several consequences for both health care providers and patients in rural China (10). For example, many barefoot doctors had difficulty to upgrading their skills since their training was previously financed by the CMS, which can affect the quality care that patients received. Additionally, without the CMS, the medical expenses became the responsibility of the patients and the high cost of hospitalization and treatment

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