Source: PEKING REVIEW Vol.1 No.3, March 18, 1958
Chisan County, in coal-producing Shansi Province, has made a name for itself with its complete network of medical and health facilities. It has a health centre for every township, complete with a full-time doctor, anti-epidemic workers, and trained nurses to look after the welfare of women and children. These centres are joint efforts of the agricultural cooperatives. Under each there is a health unit, with three to five nurses, attached to the village or co-op. These are the primary working units, but there is a hospital in every town and above that, a larger hospital, health centre and anti-epidemic department in the county seat.
Chisan County now has a doctor for every 700 people and a hospital bed for every 1,000, as well as 470 trained nurses and 883 midwives with modern scientific training. By the end of 1957 more than a hundred villages in the county were commended for their model sanitation work. In February this year 229 villages were given the title of “Five-No’s Village” — no grain-eating sparrows, no rodents, no bugs, no fleas, no lice. Once a county of ill-health and disease, Chisan today is free from the cholera, smallpox, typhoid fever, and other diseases that used to plague it.
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