Communicable disease control in China: From Mao to now

Hipgrave, David

Public health in general and CDC in particular suffered badly in this new marketised milieu, as funding for preven-tive health services declined and the government adopted a laissez-faire attitude to preventive health (19, 33) . While overall government health resources increased at an annual rate of 6% from 1980 to 1995, the rate of increase for public health services was only 4.8%. The public health share of the health budget declined from 15-18% in the 1970s to 10.6% by 1995. Hospitals were the winners, as the focus on prevention switched to treatment (19) . While the falls in county level public health funding were bad, they were worse at commune (now called township) level, with funds covering less than 60% of salaries and nothing else by 1993 (34) . Funding of preventive health activities at village level that characterized the barefoot doctor period totally disappeared over the 1980s, and is only now beginning to recover with China' s current health system reforms.