China has sent 4,050 urban doctors since last June to help improve medical service in the underdeveloped rural regions, according to the Ministry of Health on Friday.

The doctors, selected from 22 provinces and regions in central and west China, have treated nearly one million outpatients and received about 34,000 inpatients in 600 counties nationwide and 350 township clinics in northwestern Gansu Province, said the ministry in a report.

The doctors were initiated by a program launched by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which aims to send 10,000 urban doctors to assist rural areas with financial support from central and local governments.

In Gansu, the provincial health authorities also selected another 1,265 doctors from provincial-level hospitals to serve 43 county-level hospitals and 350 township clinics.

In east China's Jiangxi Province, medical teams from cities were sent to villages for two years in a row to offer medical service. Urban doctors also helped training rural health workers and donated equipments to rural clinics.

The program has benefited many farmers in the needy regions with convenient and cheaper medical service, and helped improve the management capacity of rural clinics, said spokesman of the Ministry of Health Mao Qun'an.

Aiming to establish a new cooperative medical service system covering all rural areas by 2008, Mao said the program will continue in the next few years with more efforts on introducing advanced techniques to rural health service.

(Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2006)