Communicable disease control in China: From Mao to now

Hipgrave, David

This paper provides an overview of CDC in China since the defeat of China' s Nationalists by Mao Zedong' s Communists. With regular reference to the contemporary political and economic context, it first describes what is known about disease epidemiology and causes of death before 1949, the strategies used in CDC and the major achievements made in the next 30 years. It follows with a description of the decline of CDC and community-funded public health in the context of China' s economic reform, the vertical and vertically-funded disease-control programs and, through SARS, the awakening in China of the risk posed to the people and the nation of ignoring disease surveil-a clean environment and safe drinking water, vector control, latrine construction and human waste disposal. Each of these short-term interventions (on average twice a year, lasting for around a week) required the mass mobilization of peasants, and so served to increase the "health literacy" of the rural population (1, (6) (7) (8) .