Rural mother and child health care needs more attention: official

Maternal and child health care in rural areas deserve more public attention, an official said.

"Lack of maternal and child health care facilities deserves more attention as the nation strives to lift people in rural regions out of poverty," said Qin Guoying, vice chairman and Secretary-General of China Women's Development Foundation on Saturday.

Qin highlighted the need to make more effort to establish more targeted programs to facilitate the anti-poverty progress.

Data from the foundation show that without enough health care support, there are around 260,000 women each year living in rural regions facing the higher risk of having children with illnesses.

The foundation launched an anti-poverty program specifically aimed to help improve health care conditions of mothers and children in rural areas since 2008, but for these programs public attention and enterprises' participation "remain small" compared to other charity programs, according to Qin.

Wang Chunli, general manager of Caibai gold store, said that while the company has been making donations for years, more channels to connect companies and charity organizations are needed to better encourage enterprises to find worthy charity programs.