As an important part of the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, the construction of healthy villages is not only a concrete practice of the construction of a healthy China in rural areas, but also an inevitable requirement for the high-quality development of health care and the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.
■ Li Hainan
In the vivid social practice of "Healthy China Construction", which is implemented in China, it is indispensable to build healthy villages. In this regard, 14 departments contributed their collective policy "wisdom" and jointly drew a "broad road" to promote the construction of healthy villages.
Recently, the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction of Healthy Villages" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") jointly formulated by 14 departments, including the National Health Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, was officially announced.
Focusing on the overall goal of "providing a solid health guarantee for the construction of livable, workable and beautiful villages and promoting the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas", the "Opinions" elaborate specific goals for 2030 and 2035, and focus on improving the level of rural medical services, improving rural public health service capabilities, strengthening rural traditional Chinese medicine services, strengthening health services for key populations, improving the rural health environment, popularizing rural healthy lifestyles, and developing rural health industries according to local conditions. Key tasks have been deployed in eight areas, including preventing large-scale return to poverty due to illness.
Due to its detailed task deployment and clear target arrangement, the "Opinions" are also considered to have drawn a "road map" for the construction of healthy villages. It is important to know that as an important part of the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, the construction of healthy villages is not only the specific practice of the construction of a healthy China in rural areas, but also an inevitable requirement for the high-quality development of health care and the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.
The "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese-style Modernization" deliberated and adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposes to "promote the expansion and sinking of high-quality medical resources and the balanced layout of regions, accelerate the construction of a hierarchical diagnosis and treatment system, promote the construction of close medical alliances, and strengthen primary medical and health services." This undoubtedly points out the direction for promoting the construction of healthy villages.
By decomposing and deploying a series of reform requirements into eight key tasks, the "Opinions" aim to fully implement the deployment requirements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and provide a more specific path for further improving the rural medical and health system and building healthy villages.
In recent years, positive results have been achieved in improving the specific work of the medical and health service system. According to the data, by the end of 2023, there were 33,753 township health centers in the country, with 1.505 million beds and 1.605 million health personnel, an increase of 49,000 beds and 75,000 personnel compared with the previous year.
However, even so, there is still a big gap between the development of health care in rural areas and urban areas in mainland China, especially in meeting the health needs of rural residents, coupled with the impact of multiple factors such as the urgent need to improve the rural health environment and the need for further popularization of healthy lifestyles.
The "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline clearly points out that "co-construction and sharing, health for all" is the strategic theme of building a healthy China. It can be seen that to achieve universal health, rural residents must not be allowed to be "absent". In the construction of a healthy China, "co-construction" is the path, and "sharing" must be the way back.
At this stage, it is very important to actively promote the construction of healthy villages and make up for the shortcomings of rural medical and health services. To implement the tasks specified in the Opinions, it is also necessary to focus on the balanced distribution of high-quality medical resources and realize the original intention and goal of jointly building healthy villages.
The construction of healthy villages should do everything possible to balance regional medical resources and medical talents by promoting the expansion and sinking of high-quality medical resources and the balanced distribution of regions. Among them, medical resources and medical talents are like the "two sides" of the same coin, and the two are one and closely related to each other.
On the one hand, it is necessary to actively promote the "hand-in-hand" between municipal public hospitals and township health centers through the establishment of medical alliances, improve the service capacity of grassroots medical institutions, and provide high-quality medical services for rural residents, including improving the level of rural medical services, strengthening public health service capabilities, and improving the healthy environment and lifestyle.
On the other hand, it is necessary to strengthen the training and retention of medical talents, and continuously build a solid foundation for rural health with the revitalization of rural medical talents. This requires the development of incentive policies, the construction of training bases, the improvement of working conditions, and the strengthening of community cooperation to attract, cultivate and retain more medical talents, and inject more vitality and hope into rural medical services.
Just as the implementation of the Healthy China 2030 strategy must "integrate health into all policies", healthy villages also depend on opening up multi-sectoral and multi-level policy channels, promoting the participation of the government, society and individuals, and jointly promoting healthy production and lifestyle, ecological environment and rural development models, and striving to achieve healthy and coordinated development of health and economic and social development, so as to gradually narrow the gap between urban and rural health undertakings and the gap between residents' health levels, and finally build healthy villages.
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Chief Producer丨Wang Hui and Che Haigang
Producer丨Li Piguang, Chen Bo, Wang Yu
Editor-in-Chief丨Mao Jinghui Editor丨Chen Shuhan