Poor pay: China struggles to retain rural doctors

According to a survey by Ma Wenfang, Many rural doctors have expressed the desire to leave their jobs

China is struggling to retain village doctors due to poor pay and working conditions and most of them are leaving to cities in search of better jobs, a survey said.

Many rural doctors have expressed the desire to leave their jobs, according to a survey by Ma Wenfang, a deputy to the National People's Congress and a rural doctor himself.

The survey, reported Monday by the web portal Netease. com, was conducted across 100 Chinese villages in the provinces of Shandong, Henan and Hunan.

Ma found that all 100 doctors surveyed reported low salaries, with their highest monthly income standing at a little more than 1,000 yuan, (USD 170). The lowest was only 60 yuan.

"Their complaints have included 'low income', 'no social insurance' and 'few job prospects'," Ma said. With 6,49,000 health centres spread across 5,89,000 villages, China is in desperate need of village doctors.

But the country is struggling to keep rural doctors, as a great number are increasingly reluctant to stay at their jobs due to barriers such as low pay, identity crisis and poor career prospects, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Established in the 1950s, rural doctors in China once enjoyed high social status and were well paid. But as China's medical system reform gains steam, their earnings have dwindled.

For 55-year-old Huang Aimin, practicing rural medicine has given him the best and the toughest experiences of his life.

"In the past, being a rural doctor was regarded a great honour and I was well respected," said the rural doctor in Laodun Village, east China's Jiangsu Province.

"I could also make a decent salary because I was allowed to have up to 50 per cent of the commission for each drug I prescribed," he added.

In 2009, China scrapped doctors' commissions from selling drugs by introducing the national basic drug system, cutting Huang's annual income by half to less than 20,000 yuan.

A national guideline encouraging medical workers in rural areas to get registered, receive training, pass an exam and get a license has been in force since 2004.

Tashi Yang, head of the health bureau in Muli Tibetan Autonomous County said that many older medical workers were "barefoot doctors" who had difficulty getting a license.

These people were basically students or simple villagers trained in first aid after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

They delivered basic medical services in China's vast, remote rural areas, where previously healthcare had been primitive. These services were essentially free and were crucial to the doubling of life expectancy in China from 35 years in 1949 to 68 years by 1978.

According to official statistics, almost half of Chinese rural doctors do not have proper school diplomas and most of them are not qualified to take the country's doctor qualification test. That means many village doctors are not officially recognised as "doctors".