JP/6/CHINA

Co-operative medical system can reduce rural poverty

Li Shi China Daily/Beijing

Each year a number of specially named days are celebrated to remind people of various social causes. Some of us may have become a bit bored with such promotions.

This time, however, we need to listen closely and pay some attention to what this day means. The health benefits of the country's poorest people, mostly farmers, are at stake. Many can easily be thrown into the abyss of poverty with just one illness.

How to ensure that China, with its population leading the world at 1.3 billion people, can find affordable medical care is a formidable task. A first step in recent years was the launch of an urban medical insurance system to cover city residents. But in vast rural areas, most farmers are still forced to shoulder medical costs by themselves.

In the planned economic period at the founding of the People's Republic, a sort of co-operative medical service system took root in rural areas, which meant farmers could get some basic medical services.

To provide better services for farmers, former leader Mao Zedong on June 26, 1965 called for a shift of focus from urban to rural areas in medical work.

Marking the 40th anniversary of Chairman Mao's call, the day of Health Assistance and Anti-poverty should not be taken as merely reminiscent of the leader. Rather, it should have a rich meaning at a time when many farmers do not have access to affordable medical care and remain poor.

Although farmers' incomes have been on the rise in recent years, the growth rate is rather mild. At the same time, drugs, outpatient care and the costs for hospitalization have soared.

Given their low incomes, many farmers have to borrow if they fall ill or must enter the hospital. According to statistics, 20 to 30 percent of the poor, who earn less than 637 yuan (US$77) each year, are victimized by high medical costs. In some regions, the ratio could be up to 60 percent.

Those poor would not have to fall into utter poverty if a comprehensive rural medical insurance network were in place.

The special day set aside to promote our consciousness of the moral need to provide additional medical services for poor farmers should not be taken lightly. More important, it should remind us of the urgency to spread our nascent rural co-operative medical care system to additional regions of the nation to cover more farmers.

The health assistance and anti-poverty program, a non- government project launched in 2002, has helped about 150 million people nationwide in 300 cities and counties.

This charitable program deserves our respect and applause. It plays an important role in helping poor farmers shake off poverty.

However, such a project can contribute to, but cannot provide, an all-round solution to the country's problems of unaffordable medical care for farmers.

The ultimate solution still lies in the national co-operative rural medical system, to which the central and local governments and farmers themselves each contribute a small sum of funds.

Launched on a trial basis in 2003, the co-operative program has pooled 1.18 billion yuan ($142 million) nationwide through the end of last year to help provide inexpensive medical services for more than five million farmers.

Now, policy-makers are pooling opinions on the effectiveness of the new medical co-operative program to decide whether to further expand its scale and scope.

Undoubtedly, this is the right first step.