China's Executive Vice-Minister of Health Gao Qiang said on Tuesday that his ministry will increase health workers training in the country's vast rural areas.
 
"We hope all the village doctors would undergo at least vocational school training by the year 2015 and 85 percent of them receive the certificate of assistant physician," Gao said at a meeting commending those young experts who have made outstanding contributions to the medical and health work.
  
Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that at the end of 2003, China had about 868,000 rural doctors and health workers in villages, averaging 1.25 doctors or health workers per village and 0.98 doctor or health worker per thousand peasants. Though China has a 900 million rural population, only 74,000 assistant physicians are working in village clinics.
 
Gao said the imbalance of medical staff in China's urban and rural areas is one of the key problems that the ministry is targeting.
  
The ministry will improve personnel training in the rural and western areas by focusing on public health workers at the grass-root level, he said. 

(Xinhua News Agency November 16, 2004)