ABSTRACT
In 1948, China was extremely poor, services were disrupted, and healthcare facilities were very limited. Evidence of the improvement in standards of health in China includes the increase in life expectancy from around 45 years in 1949 to 70 years in the early 1990s, a decline in the rate of infant mortality from over 150 per 1,000 in 1949 to 35 in the early 1990s, and the increasing proportion of deaths from degenerative causes (e.g. malignant neoplasms, heart diseases) as opposed to infectious and parasitic diseases. According to CSY 1992 (p. 738), the number of personnel in healthcare institutions has increased from 450,000 in 1949 to over 5 million in 1991. In the 1950s there were more doctors practising traditional Chinese medicine than western medicine, but since the early 1960s the number of traditional practitioners has hardly changed, while the number of practitioners of western medicine has increased more than fourfold. With its average of 650 people per doctor, China is well provided for, compared with almost all other developing countries. The back-up in the form of nursing and other staff and of hospital beds and other facilities is not, however, equally generous.
