Li Suhua, a 42-year-old rural woman in north China, was quite familiar with visits by family planning officials, who always came to enforce the "one child" policy. But Li was surprised to learn recently they came to give her a free health check-up.
"I've never had any sort of health check-ups before," said Li, who lives in Tahuangqi Village of Fengning County in north China's Hebei Province.
"Quite often I felt pain in my belly, but I used to treat it with pain killers bought from local drugstore," she said.
Li was diagnosed with cervical erosion, which for years she thought was just an annoying bellyache.
"Without the check-up, I wouldn't have known how bad the situation is," she said. "It saved my life and my family."
Like Li, many Chinese women living in rural areas never receive reproductive health check-ups, either because they can not afford it or simply because they are unfamiliar with reproductive health issues, said Hu Dianzhen, head of the county's family planning service station.
A recent survey showed that 30 to 40 percent of married women in rural Hebei Province have suffered from gynecological diseases for years; one tenth has lost the ability to work.
As a result, the provincial family planning commission has launched a program that combines free reproductive health checks with routine birth control surveillance for the nine million women living in rural areas, said Zhao Xin, head of the Hebei Commission of Population and Family Planning.
Those to be covered by the program are married women below the age of 49. Items of the check-ups include breast disease, diseases on reproductive organs, and other common gynecological diseases.
A general check-up normally costs 50 to 60 yuan (US$6.05-7.25), equivalent to a farmer's income of half a month in the province, Zhao said.
Once diagnosed as having reproductive problems, the female spouse will be advised to receive medical treatment. Extremely poor couples are eligible for free medical aid, the official said.
"The program not only brings real benefits to women, but also improves the relations between the general public and the authorities," a local official said.
Previously, China's family planning officials only took charge of supervising the implementation of the "one child" policy and persuading couples not to have more than one baby.
In poor rural areas, where men shoulder the burden of supporting family life, local officials were often criticized to implement the one-child policy indiscriminately and be rude to couples who are unable to pay fines.
"But things are changing," Zhao Xin said.
In provinces like Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Henan, family planning officials are distributing free condoms, advocating HIV/AIDS awareness and briefing gynecological problems to married women.
As a result, people are becoming more and more friendly to birth control officials, Zhao said, adding, "They give us eggs and fruits, and even welcome us with country performances."
Zhang Shikun, a senior official with the State Commission for Population and Family Planning, said she was not surprised by the change in the attitude of rural women because they have benefited by the officials' work.
"China's current family planning policies are not just designed to curb population growth but also to improve the quality of everyone's life," she said.
Zhao Baige, deputy director of the State Commission for Population and Family Planning, said at the tenth anniversary of the Happiness Project for needy mothers that the new practices of Hebei are worth introducing nationwide so that check-ups become an indispensable and routine part of the work of family planning officials.
(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2005)
