Barefoot doctor
The term barefoot doctor refers to people in China who work as a doctor , but who (can) only meet minimum requirements.
definition
A barefoot doctor ( Chinese 赤脚 医生 , pinyin chìjiǎo yīshēng ) is a person trained in traditional Chinese medicine who moves from village to village. Among other things, the term should also express that the person concerned has no academic training. In this way, China tries to ensure a minimum of medical care in the villages as well.
commitment
The barefoot doctor was part of a greater turn to rural areas during the Cultural Revolution . This is also underlined with a saying of Mao Zedong , who demanded in 1965: "Put the focus in the health care system on the rural areas!"
The barefoot doctor was not part of the state health care system, but was organized and financed by the agricultural collective. He was a member of the agricultural collective who only performed simple additional medical services. In propaganda, this should always be a peasant, but it was often also a young person who was deported to the country or others who were transferred to the country as punishment. Most of the time he only had a three-month training in the district hospital and then mainly took on preventive tasks. He (or she) was the first port of call for the farmers, and a supply of herbs was propagated. How many barefoot doctors there really were can no longer be determined today because no official statistics were kept at the time of the Cultural Revolution.
Women also worked as barefoot doctors. There are suspicions that they even formed the majority.
There is no longer a barefoot doctor in this form. The remaining barefoot doctors were renamed to village doctors ( 乡村 医生 , xiāng cūn yī shēng ) in 1985 .
Figurative meaning
There is something similar in other countries in Asia and Africa.
In Germany, the term is used for academically trained doctors and specialists who work or have to work without any noteworthy aids. The term is also used in a derogatory way for (supposedly) unqualified doctors or medical groups, for example in the meaning of quacks .
literature
- Nathan Sivin: Traditional medicine in contemporary China: a partial translation of Revised outline of Chinese medicine (1972) with an introductory study on change in present-day and early medicine . Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987. ISBN 0-89264-073-1 .
- A Barefoot Doctor's Manual: The American Translation of the Official Chinese Paramedical Manual (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1977). ISBN 0-914294-92-X .
- Sascha Klotzbücher: The rural health system of the People's Republic of China: structures - actors - dynamics. (Frankfurt etc .: Peter Lang, 2006). ISBN 978-3-631-55240-7 .
- Xiaoping Fang: Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2012).
Web links
- Sascha Klotzbücher, University of Vienna: The barefoot doctor - the last myth of the cultural revolution (PDF, 18 pages)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release of the Bavarian State Medical Association 2005
- ↑ Barefoot doctor at 3Sat (no longer available due to RÄStV § 11d paragraph 2 number 3)
- ↑ International health insurance for expatriates ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 430 kB)
- ↑ a b Sascha Klotzbücher, University of Vienna: The barefoot doctor - the last myth of the cultural revolution
- ↑ Klotzbücher, Sascha 2006: The rural health system of the People's Republic of China: Structures - Actors - Dynamics. (Frankfurt etc .: Peter Lang, 103-107)
- ↑ Barefoot doctor in Mongolia and Africa ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 270 kB)
- ↑ Heike Korzilius, Josef Maus: Family doctor care: "We are well positioned". In: Dt. Medical journal. 2006, accessed November 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Intercultural competence: As a "barefoot doctor" in Afghanistan. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: Landmine.de. October 4, 2005, archived from the original on December 3, 2013 ; Retrieved on November 26, 2013 ( originally published in Donaukurier ). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Federal Association of Resident Cardiologists eV Grated Red Wood Ant for Health Insurance Patients? (2003) ( Memento of the original from November 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
