The aim is to ensure that rural residents have easy access to primary health care services.

"Local authorities should take practical measures to promote basic reforms in China's medical care system in the countryside and provide rural residents with better medical treatment," said Vice-Minister of Health Peng Yu.

He was speaking at a recent meeting during which health officials from various localities exchanged their experiences in medical care reforms in rural areas.

In China, 900 million rural people - accounting for 70 percent of the population - share just 20 per cent of the nation's medical resources.

In the 1970s, China had a rural collective medical care system in the countryside on the basis of the people's communes, but the system lost its vigor with the collapse of the people's communes two decades ago.

And with the improvement in rural people's living standards, it has become an urgent priority to upgrade medical and health care systems in rural areas.

A national instruction on the reform and development of the rural health care system issued in May requires the establishment of a medical service network to adapt to reform of the economic system and social development in rural areas.

The guideline calls for the establishment of an effective health security system for farmers and an increase in the supply of medical resources in rural areas.

Health workers in the countryside should pass professional examinations at various levels and have licenses to practise medicine.

(China Daily November 3, 2001)