China's 800 million rural residents are going to enjoy a better primary health service under a newly adopted administrative regulation on the management of medical practitioners in the nation's vast countryside.

All country doctors now must apply for a certificate, valid forfive years, to practice medicine, which means some farmers with a knowledge of medicine taking on part-time jobs as doctors will have to get a professional education under the new regulations, the English-language newspaper China Daily reported on Monday.

The regulation aims to improve the professional skills and ethics of country doctors, enhance the management of medical practitioners, protect the legitimate interests and rights of rural doctors, and ensure that villagers have full access to primary medical care.

The rural population accounts for the vast majority of the nation's almost 1.3 billion people, according to the latest censusconducted in 2001.

Nevertheless, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health, there were just over one-million-strong country doctors in China at the end of 2001 and more than 33 percent of them were over 46 years old.

(Xinhua News Agency   Aug 18, 2003)