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

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schools. The 28 medical schools in China in 1934 included only two exclusively for women and<br />

three for men. Out of 3,655 students, 619, or 16.9 percent, were women. 200<br />

In addition to improving medical education, there was a concentrated effort to develop<br />

maternal and child health programs. In 1929, the Ministry of Health’s first Five-Year Program<br />

aimed to provide preventive and clinical maternal and child health care in cities and rural areas.<br />

This plan focused on building a health administration unit and training facilities. It included the<br />

creation of the Central Field Health Station in Nanjing, a central hygiene institute with research<br />

labs and a drug production unit. It also established the Chinese National Health Administration<br />

under the Ministry of Interior in 1931, a body responsible for health legislation enforcement and<br />

administrative supervision that reported to the Executive Yuan. The Central Field Health Station<br />

was responsible for technical and educational aspects of the National Health Administration. 201<br />

The Five-Year Program also created programs to train old-style and modern midwives<br />

and public health nurses, as well as provide a nationwide maternal and child health care network.<br />

Like other aspects of public health in China in the 1920s and 1930s, these training programs<br />

were heavily influenced by the LON-HO. At the 1931 LON-HO European Conference on Rural<br />

Hygiene, “the continental system of two grades of midwives was favored, with the ‘second-<br />

class’ midwife’s shorter period of training oriented toward rural health work.” 202 This meant that<br />

high school graduates could enroll in lengthy midwife training programs, while at the other end<br />

old-style midwives would get a cursory two-week to two-month instruction on methods of<br />

aseptic childbirth. This was the basic model that the First National Midwifery School followed.<br />

200 Tao, "Medical Education of Chinese Women," 75.<br />

201 Lucas, Chinese Medical Modernization: Comparative Policy Continuities, 1930s - 1980s, 60-61.<br />

202 Ibid., 65.<br />

78

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