China Newsweek reported, “A doctor who graduated from a secondary vocational school is responsible for the medical care for nine villages and a total of 1,400 people. When the COVID epidemic wave hit there, he had only a few boxes of fever reduction medicine and 30 antigen test kits.” In the past three years, his villages didn’t treat any patient who had a fever or store any medicine, nor would COVID medicine be shipped there since they were in remote mountains. This doctor spent 3,000 yuan (US$440), of his own money to buy an oxygen machine for his patients.
Normally China’s village hospitals do not have enough medical staff members, medical beds, ventilators, or extra-corporeal life support devices. However, many elderly people in villages do not have regular medical checkups and they often had some different illnesses already before COVID hit. Thus such villages face a much tougher fight against the COVID infection wave.
Even the county level hospitals are short of ventilators: only half of the beds have them.
Source: China News Agency, January 16, 2023
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202301160242.aspx