Health manpower strategies for rural health services - India & China: 1949-1975

Abstract

This paper compares the health manpower strategies pursued in India and China and brings out the implications of these strategies for the birth control programme. The three key areas discussed are: training medical manpower, redistribution of health manpower from urban to rural areas and utilisation of practitioners of indigenous medicine. The examination brings out that while the broad principles of Chinese rural health policy are relevant to India, the task of implementing egalitarian health policies through the existing elite system will not be easy. The Chinese experience suggests that neither a general commitment to socialism nor concentration of power in the hands of a small political-administrative elite can become an adequate mechanism for major social changes. Only a leadership determined to restructure both attitudes and power relationships $ithin the political-administrative system will succeed. Such a restructuring must involve, among other Mings, de-bureaucratisation and decentralisation of power to the people.