Changing Narratives and Persisting Tensions: Conflicts between Chinese and Western Medicine and Professional Profiles in Chinese Films and Literature, 1949-2009.

This paper analyses the shifting images of Chinese medicine and rural doctors in the narratives of literature and film from 1949 to 2009 in order to explore the persisting tensions within rural medicine and health issues in China. Popular anxiety about health services and the government's concern that it be seen to be meeting the medical needs of China's most vulnerable citizens - its rural dwellers - has led to the production of a continuous body of literary and film works discussing these issues, such as Medical Practice Incident, Spring Comes to the Withered Tree, Chunmiao, and Barefoot Doctor Wan Quanhe. The article moves chronologically from the early years of the Chinese Communist Party's new rural health strategies through to the twenty-first century - over these decades, both health politics and arts policy underwent dramatic transformations. It argues that despite the huge political investment on the part of the Chinese Communist Party government in promoting the virtues of Chinese medicine and barefoot doctors, film and literature narratives reveal that this rustic nationalistic vision was a problematic ideological message. The article shows that two main tensions persisted prior to and during the Cultural Revolution, the economic reform era of the 1980s, and the medical marketisation era that began in the late 1990s. First, the tension between Chinese and Western medicine and, second, the tension between formally trained medical practitioners and paraprofessional practitioners like barefoot doctors. Each carried shifting ideological valences during the decades explored, and these shifts complicated their portrayal and shaped their specific styles in the creative works discussed. These reflected the main dilemmas around the solutions to rural medicine and health care, namely the integration of Chinese and Western medicines and blurring of boundaries between the work of medical paraprofessionals and professionals.

Visualising Primary Health Care: World Health Organization Representations of Community Health Workers, 1970-89.

For the World Health Organization (WHO), the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration marked a move away from the disease-specific and technologically-focused programmes of the 1950s and 1960s towards a reimagined strategy to provide 'Health for All by the Year 2000'. This new approach was centred on primary health care, a vision based on acceptable methods and appropriate technologies, devised in collaboration with communities and dependent on their full participation. Since 1948, the WHO had used mass communications strategies to publicise its initiatives and shape public attitudes, and the policy shift in the 1970s required a new visual strategy. In this context, community health workers (CHWs) played a central role as key visual identifiers of Health for All. This article examines a period of picturing and public information work on the part of the WHO regarding CHWs. It sets out to understand how the visual politics of the WHO changed to accommodate PHC as a new priority programme from the 1970s onwards. The argument tracks attempts to define CHWs and examines the techniques employed by the WHO during the 1970s and early 1980s to promote the concept to different audiences around the world. It then moves to explore how the process was evaluated, as well as the difficulties in procuring fresh imagery. Finally, the article traces these representations through the 1980s, when community approaches came under sustained pressure from external and internal factors and imagery took on the supplementary role of defending the concept.

Barefoot Doctors and the "Health Care Revolution" in Rural China: A Study Centered on Shandong Province.

Barefoot doctors were rural medical personnel trained en masse, whose emergence and development had a particular political, economic, social, and cultural background. Like the rural cooperative medical care system, the barefoot doctor was a well-known phenomenon in the Cultural Revolution. Complicated regional differences and a lack of reliable sources create much difficulty for the study of barefoot doctors and result in differing opinions of their status and importance. Some scholars greatly admire barefoot doctors, whereas others harshly criticize them. This paper explores the rise and development of barefoot doctors based on a case study of Shandong province. I argue that the promotion of barefoot doctors was a consequence of the medical education revolution and an implementation of the Cultural Revolution in rural public health care, which significantly influenced medical services and development in rural areas. First, barefoot doctors played a significant role in accomplishing the first rural health care revolution by providing primary health care to peasants and eliminating endemic and infectious illnesses. Second, barefoot doctors were the agents who integrated Western and Chinese medicines under the direction of the state. As an essential part of the rural cooperative medical system, barefoot doctor personnel grew in number with the system's implementation. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the cooperative medical system began to disintegrate-a process that accelerated in the 1980s until the system's collapse in the wake of the de-collectivization. As a result, the number of barefoot doctors also ran down steadily. In 1985, "barefoot doctor" as a job title was officially removed from Chinese medical profession, demonstrating that its practice was non-universal and unsustainable.

The emergence of community health worker programmes in the late apartheid era in South Africa: An historical analysis.

There is re-emerging interest in community health workers (CHWs) as part of wider policies regarding task-shifting within human resources for health. This paper examines the history of CHW programmes established in South Africa in the later apartheid years (1970s-1994) - a time of innovative initiatives. After 1994, the new democratic government embraced primary healthcare (PHC), however CHW initiatives were not included in their health plan and most of these programmes subsequently collapsed. Since then a wide array of disease-focused CHW projects have emerged, particularly within HIV care. Thirteen oral history interviews and eight witness seminars were conducted in South Africa in April 2008 with founders and CHWs from these earlier programmes. These data were triangulated with written primary sources and analysed using thematic content analysis. The study suggests that 1970s-1990s CHW programmes were seen as innovative, responsive, comprehensive and empowering for staff and communities, a focus which respondents felt was lost within current programmes. The growth of these earlier projects was underpinned by the struggle against apartheid. Respondents felt that the more technical focus of current CHW programmes under-utilise a valuable human resource which previously had a much wider social and health impact. These prior experiences and lessons learned could usefully inform policy-making frameworks for CHWs in South Africa today.

Experimentando a teoria na prática: reflexão a partir das vivências dos residentes em saúde da família na USF Antares / Experiencing the theory in practice: reflection from the experiences of residents in the family health at USF Antares

(...) Este trabalho busca analisar as atividades realizadas pela nossa equipe, alocada em Antares, através da produção de conhecimento a partir da experiência profissional. Utilizamos para tal fim os Diários Reflexivos, o Relatório de Identificação de Necessidades e Potencialidades da Unidade de Saúde da Família Antares, o Mapa Conceitual e dados resgatados através do Sistema de informação da Atenção Básica. A partir da experiência vivida em campo e das reflexões decorrentes desta prática, optamos por desenvolver projetos quem nos permitissem contribuir para a capacidade resolutiva das equipes e para a ampliação da clínica. Apesar da Estratégia de Saúde da família estar implantada há oito anos nesta Unidade de Saúde da família, há muito a caminhar para sua consolidação e ampliação das formas de cuidado.

[Evolution of village doctors from the communist regime to contemporary China: reeducation of the "barefoot doctors" in rural communities].

To modernize health care in China, much emphasis is currently being put on the in-service training for the remaining group of its medical paraprofessionals known as the "barefoot doctors". They have functioned differently from the conventional professional physicians. They were farmers, yet they took care of the primary health care needs in their communes even without proper medical education. The manner in which they trained and practiced their profession as barefoot doctors was a unique modality of China's health care system during the Cultural Revolution. When the revolution ended, the economic reforms placed the barefoot doctors in a bad light. They were negatively perceived and their credibility as health care workers continued to be a major health management issue since the barefoot doctors reflected the strong ideals of the revolution. Despite this criticism from central government and the general public, their professional growth has been encouraged because of the insufficiency of local physicians who can 1 provide appropriate health care for the rural peasants. This study describes their historical evolution in the paraprofessional medical manpower development of China, to explore further directions of primary health care in contemporary China.

CHWs get credit: a 10-year history of the first college-credit certificate for community health workers in the United States.

Community health workers have become increasingly important in the U.S. health care system, playing a significant role in basic health promotion and care coordination; however, their status and visibility have not kept pace with their wider use. A major impediment has been the absence of systematic preparation-the field needs standardized education in programs that emphasize the actual skills and knowledge used by community health workers, programs that attract and retain nontraditional students from underserved communities and that foster professional advancement. This article chronicles the 10-year history of the first college credit-bearing community health worker certificate program in the country to address this need. Systematic research resulted in a program centered on the core competencies universally practiced by community health workers regardless of their topical focus. The certificate program combines performance-based methods with popular education into an innovative pedagogical approach that teaches skills, while solidifying, contextualizing, and enhancing crucial experiential knowledge. Program outcomes validate the approach.

Professions and intestinal infections in 15th-century Florence.

The aims behind this study are to verify a possible relationship between intestinal infectious diseases and certain professional activities carried out in 15th-century Florence by some categories of lesser labourers. Sources of the present study were the Libri dei Morti by the Florentine Ufficio della Grascia concerning the years 1424-25 and 1430 characterized by a plague epidemic. In this period, thanks to the particular social and economic circumstances of the times, the Libri dei Morti were enriched with additional notes about the illness that caused the deaths. The tables show an analysis of the data concerning the types of illness, the residence of the deceased and his/her social state. The present study suggests that certain professions were more exposed to infectious pathologies.

[Town physicians in Alkmaar during the sixteenth century]. / Alkmaarse Stadsdoctoren in de Zestiende Eeuw.

According to the oldest known contract of a town physician in Alkmaar, dated 1561, he should serve the poor and the homes for the aged and the infirm. Around 1560 the town payed him for his duties the sum of 36 Dutch guilders and he was exempt from duties concerning the citizen soldiery. His fee was raised (during the second part of the century) to 80 guilders in 1582 and 100 in 1591. Master Melisz Cornelisz was probably the first town physician as the author traced his activities back to 1529. The well-known physician Pieter van Foreest, who practised medicine in Alkmaar from 1546-1558, was one of Melis' pupils. Van Foreest also did the work of a town physician, though without earning any fees. A list of the Alkmaar town physicians in the sixteenth century could be constructed using a variety of sixteenth century documents. Most information was obtained from the vroedschapsresoluties (city council documents) as these show all negotiations between the town magistrate and the possible candidates. In several cases it seems obvious that no agreement was reached. Seven different town physicians with a contract between 1560 and 1600 could be traced.

"Popular" health and the state: dialectics of the peace process in El Salvador.

The poor performance of large-scale "vertical" rural health programs tied to state Ministries of Health in Third World countries has often been attributed to a lack of "political will". But that term tells little about the conditions that favor health reform and may obscure disparate power relations and struggles over development. This work explores such a struggle over community health that emerged as part of the peace process in a former war zone of El Salvador since the 1992 ceasefire. The formalized negotiations (and behind-the-scenes confrontations) over health in Chalatenango province took place between Ministry of Health administrators and proponents of a "popular" health system that has functioned in repopulated villages of rebel-controlled Chalatenango since 1987. The Ministry has set up its own national (U.S. AID-designed) community health worker program, and agreed in theory with the popular system's emphasis on village-based lay health promoters; however, in negotiations and efforts at collaboration in Chalatenango the Ministry has been unwilling to support the promoters in the popular system, to accommodate local participation in health decision-making, or to restructure its own physician-centered practices around the need for more comprehensive approaches to health.

A man with two boats - Part I

A brief biography of Father Keith Augustus Muller S. J. (1841-1910). Founder of Father Muller's charitable institutions, Mangalore, South India. (This first part deals with the early life of Father Muller)