Brighter future on offer for village doctors
Print Edition
As veteran village doctor Deng Qiandui approaches retirement, he dreams of a pension scheme similar to that enjoyed by his urban counterparts.
Deng, 51, whose highest level of education was junior middle school, became a doctor at Lamadi, a village in an underdeveloped region of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, after six months of training at a local hospital in 1983.
As one of the two doctors in the village, Deng provides basic medical services for 1,030 people but he is not covered by the social insurance system like his urban or township counterparts.
According to Deng, a township hospital doctor receives a monthly pension of about 2,200 yuan (US$354), more than twice what he currently earns. In 2009, he was being paid a little more than 200 yuan a month. Government subsidies have since increase remarkably but he says they are still far from enough.
Deng is one of more than a million village doctors in China who have little professional training and are poorly funded. The humble salary and lack of a pension have stopped many young people entering the profession, making medical services in remote areas even more difficult to access for villagers.
For most people in Lamadi, Deng’s clinic is the only choice when they get sick, with the closest township hospital four and half hours away via mountain paths.
To ensure a quality medical service in rural areas, the State Council last week released a document outlining better treatment for village doctors.
The document ensures one doctor for every 1,000 rural residents. These rural doctors will get extra training for free, better opportunities to further education and preference in their future careers, along with higher pay and pensions.
Village doctors are irreplaceable in China as there are still 800 million people living in the countryside, said Lu Lin, head of the Yunnan provincial disease control and prevention center.
“The root of the crowds of patients in urban hospitals is the lack of effective grassroots medical services,” said Lu.
For Deng, government recognition, a decent salary and a pension equal to his township counterparts is what he needs most.
If Deng retires this year, he would get only 60 yuan every month like his fellow villagers.
“It is unfair for us whose work is no different with urban and township doctors,” said Deng. In some cases, their job is more difficult, he said, recalling an instance when he had to travel across a steel rope hanging above a river to reach one patient’s home.
Deng hopes the government can set up detailed arrangements for them as soon as possible.
Much to his surprise, Deng’s son, 29, a migrant worker in the booming city of Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province, wants to come back to be a village doctor.
As village doctors now seem to have better prospects after the government announcement, Deng agreed and decided to send him to a technical school in the Nujiang Prefecture to study medicine.
“In two years he will graduate,” Deng said.
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