BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

for doctors started in 1933 with 16 students and included 16 hours each of maternal and child
health courses and practicum. There were 18 students the following year. The public health
nurse program began the same year with 23 students, and the 1934 course had 30 students. It
included 36 hours of obstetrics instruction and 216 hours of obstetrics practicum. 269
In Shanghai, midwifery and maternal and child health formed a substantial part of the
city’s public health efforts. In 1928, the Greater Shanghai Bureau of Public Health was
established in 1928 as an administrative unit of the City Government. Its program included
sanitation, control of communicable diseases, vital statistics, and “public health education, which
includes personal health talks, public lectures, demonstrations, health movements, health motion
picture shows, health posters, circulars, newspapers and reprints, etc.” 270 They also organized a
medical service to promote mental and physical health, including medical services from birth to
death: “maternity and infant hygiene, pre-school health, school health, health of the workers,
medical clinics, hospital facilities, and registration of hospitals, physicians, midwives and nurses,
etc.” 271 Between 1933 and 1934, the number of deliveries made by the Bureau’s personnel
nearly doubled, from 234 to 426. The postnatal clinic service also expanded dramatically, from
39 visits in 1933 to 451 in 1934. The Bureau also distributed over one million public health
fliers and pamphlets in this period and examined more than 40,000 school children. 272
The Shanghai Health Commissioner in 1933 had plans to establish one health center in
each of 16 police districts, some of which would also have infirmaries. Two primary public
health centers started in Shanghai in the 1920s were at Gaoqiao and Chapei districts. The
Gaoqiao Village Public Health Model District (Gaoqiao xiangcun weisheng mofan qu 高桥乡村
269 Neizhengbu, Neizheng Nianjian, G211-13.
270 Woodhead, ed., The China Yearbook 1935.
271 Ibid.
272 Ibid.
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