Video (YouTube): China’s barefoot doctors
Get ready for a history lesson you’ll actually want to sit through. Although even a bit academic for our taste (go back and forth between this and the panda video if you have to), this video from 1975 about China’s medical history, specifically the concept of “barefoot doctors,” (chijiao yisheng, 赤脚医生), is far from boring.
The China Study Group gives a brief background of this group of medical professionals:
“In 1965, in what has become his famous June 26 directive, Chairman Mao insisted that in health and medical work, the stress should be on the rural areas. China needed doctors, not only in the cities, but on the farms, where 80 percent of the population lived. But how could China, relatively poor in resources and medical man power, provide adequate resources for the over 600 million people in the vast countryside?
As a result of Mao’s directive, 20 percent of China’s medical personnel were transferred from urban to rural areas to provide health services, but their main task was to train locally based paramedics, the barefoot doctors."
Grab you popcorn this one is going to be good, and admit it, you need a good dose of realism after watching 2012 or Avatar. After the movie you can start trying to figure out what medicine and barefoot doctor's care looks like in rural areas now.
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