From 1950-1980, China's socialist class process offered programs like "education, healthcare, housing, permanent employment and old age pensions: the iron rice bowl." Although there was favoritism in the urban areas, most citizens were not allowed to travel to a different area. "Such a movement could created a crisis for feudal exploitation in the countryside, it could also potencially ignite a crisi among urban workers" (Gabriel 2006). However, "bare-foot doctors" were availble in rural areas. "With large manpower input, the government could implement various public health campaigns, such as fighting against the four pests (rats, flies, mosquitoes, and bed bugs), expanding nationwide immunization, and training indigenous rural health workers (so called 'bare-foot doctors')".
Begining in 1978, China's economic reforms opened the nation to capitalist class processes, where workers and laborers would agree upon a wage in exchange for labor, and workers would be able to work for different companies, if they wished to. Unfortunately, this change meant that China's social services became decreasingly available through the national subsidized system, and instead more people were personally paying for their healthcare. "Using a poverty line measure of U.S. $1.08 per day, out-of-pocket health expenditures increased the poverty rate in China to 16.2 percent from 13.7 percent".
"[T]he combination of market reforms and mass migration to China's cities as the nation has industrialized has left a system dominated by fee-for-service care, where patients pay for treatment out of their own pockets, with large differences in quality and access among income groups and between rural and urban populations".
Currently, AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, as well as other dieases like SARS, and even increases in heart disease and high blood pressure. WHO and UNAIDS estimates that about 650,000 people are affected by the HIV virus, and for 75,000 of them, it has developed into AIDS. However, particularly for AIDS, there is a stigma against those who suffer from it. One person diagnosed with HIV/AIDS remarked, "Your family won't eat with you, they give you food to eat apart from them, and they won't have contact with you. Your friends ignore you. They are afraid of getting it from causal contact. If you pass them a cigarette, they won't accept it".
Although healthcare by high profile diseases, like AIDS, has been on the rise, most common diseases aren't being treated by the government. Instead, these costs are passed onto the individual, who might not be able to pay for their services. This could have dangerous implications if nothing is done to allieviate the situation. "[T]he efforts this money is paying for are largely uncoordinated and directed mostly at specific high-profile diseases -- rather than at public health in general -- there is a grave danger that the current age of generosity could not only fall short of expectations but actually make things worse on the ground."
|
