With the rural population making up 80 percent of the population, whether benefit of reform can be extended to this group constitutes an important benchmark to gauge the success of China's economic development and social progress in the past decades.

The rural healthcare cooperative system that was initiated by the central government in 2002 is one of the steps the central authorities have taken to let rural villagers share in the yield of reform.

Statistics provided by the minister of health at yesterday's press conference show that more than 720 million or 84 percent of the rural population have joined the scheme, which is primarily meant to guarantee medical expenses for villagers to be hospitalized or have serious diseases treated. This system is popular with villagers.

It is not easy to establish a healthcare network to cover such a large population. The cooperative system, the fund of which is jointly contributed by the central and local governments and rural villagers themselves, is a workable and reasonable mechanism to provide basic healthcare for rural people.

For those poverty-stricken people, local governments pay the insurance on their behalf. In addition, the payment of 10 yuan ($1.3) per person a year does not exert any financial pressure on rural people. But the financial aid they receive when they need to see a doctor for a serious disease or to be hospitalized is enough to prevent them from becoming bankrupt.

Yet, the scheme still leaves much to be desired or it is still in its preliminary stage. In the breakdown of figures about the expenses reimbursed from the fund in the first six months this year, health checkups make up only a small proportion of the money and the number of villagers who received such checkups is lower than those to be hospitalized.

This formula needs to be changed gradually, as Minister of Health Chen Zhu pointed out. More money from the fund needs to be shifted to disease prevention, which will help villagers discover serious diseases earlier and thus the number of patients to be hospitalized will reduce and so will the expenses on hospitalized patients.

To set up a sound disease control and prevention system in rural areas, a qualified group of medical workers is indispensable. But that is where much more efforts need to be made in terms of healthcare resources and funding. The minister said he hoped that universities of medical science would train more medical workers who are willing to work in rural areas.

(China Daily 09/06/2007 page9)