ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that China's public health policy after the revolution drew on the experience accumulated in the Soviet Union, but also contained several innovative and unique features. It deals with a description of the innovative public health policy developed and pursued during the first three decades of the People's Republic of China, using one communicable endemic disease, schistosomiasis. Yet the economic reforms were accompanied by a gradual relaxation of the isolation policy followed strictly during the Mao Ze Dong era. Its changing foreign policy enabled China to recruit international support and to join forces with other nations to preserve public health and cope with emerging challenges. A massive health education effort was undertaken, using all available methods to teach farmers about the disease, the parasitic life cycle, transmission, and prevention. Special attention is given to women of childbearing age and iodine deficiency disorders prevention and education are guaranteed by the 1995 Law for the Protection of Infants and Women.
