Doctors resign over lack of subsidies; probe ordered

The National Health Commission has urged an investigation into the mass resignation of 36 village doctors in Henan province who claimed the local government is withholding their subsidies.

Song Shuli, spokeswoman of the commission, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the commission has ordered Henan Provincial Health Commission to immediately investigate the issue. "No matter where the problem occurred, it must be investigated thoroughly and immediately rectified," she said. "We will solve the problem and ensure the lawful interests of village doctors so they can provide better healthcare services to the vast number of residents in rural areas."

In a resignation letter signed by 36 doctors in Zhusha township, Tongxu county, dated June 28, the doctors said they have been facing increasing work pressure. Even though the central government had allocated funding for subsidies based on patient workloads, the county had withheld payment, the doctors claimed in the letter.

In a statement released on Monday, the county government said it had started an investigation following media reports and had spoken with all the 36 doctors.

The county denied the doctors' complaints that they had heavier workloads. But it admitted that some county departments had delayed paying the doctors' subsidies and promised to honor all of them before July 20.

China has intensified efforts in recent years to improve grassroots healthcare services to ensure universal healthcare coverage. However, a lack of qualified doctors in rural areas has been a major obstacle.

The number of doctors and other health workers in villages across China was 907,000 last year, a decrease of 62,000 compared with the previous year, according to the National Health Commission.

In contrast, the total number of health professionals in the country reached 12.3 million, an increase of 4.6 percent year-on-year, it said.

He Jinguo, chief of poverty alleviation at the commission, said a major problem for village doctors was the lower income compared with their peers in big hospitals in cities. Despite government subsidies for village doctors, doctors working in villages with smaller populations cannot get a big increase in salary as the subsides are based on the number of people treated by the doctors, he said.

"We do not require every village with a population smaller than 800 to have at least a health center. Rather, a health center can be set up for two such villages, so doctors in the center can provide services to more people and have higher income," he said.