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

Furthermore, it was hard to get qualified doctors to live in remote rural areas, battle traditional
beliefs, and compete with TCM practitioners. There were also the continuing shortages of
funding and resources, corruption, and lack of transportation for medical supplies and people. 237
RURAL MIDWIFERY PROGRAMS
The Five-Year Plan drawn up in 1934 at the national Public Health Division of the Internal
Affairs Department meeting stated that every county in every province would have public health
facilities within five years. However, due to lack of funds, only Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi,
Guangxi, and Henan had counties with such facilities by 1935. The Plan also stated that the
counties should each have maternal and child health facilities and training programs (xunlianban
训练班) for old-style midwives (jieshengpo 接生婆). In fact, these goals were part of Year One
of the Five-Year Plan, second only to opening 25-bed hospitals in each county. Year One also
included provisions for public health programs in schools and methods to “propagate public
health” (weisheng xuanchuan 宣传).
At the end of the first Five-Year Plan, each village (cun 村) or group of villages was to
establish a 25-bed hospital with internal medicine, surgery, and OB/GYN departments. The head
of the hospital, a medical doctor, was charged with attending patients, including pregnant women
and newborns, as well as overseeing the district public health work. Each cun or group of cun
was to have a district dispensary with old-style midwives trained in modern methods whose
duties were to assist childbirth and report births and deaths to their district dispensaries
(zhiliaosuo 治疗所). The head nurse in charge of the district dispensary had as her duties to treat
237 Lucas, Chinese Medical Modernization, 88-89, Liu Ruiheng’s report at the 1937 League of Nations-Health
Organization (hereafter LON-HO) Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries on Rural Hygiene, LON-
HO, C.H. 1195 and 1235.
90