Farmers and herdsmen living in China's westernmost Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region can look forward to abundant medicine following the formation of a medical care and disease-prevention network, according to a news conference held in Beijing.

Simayi Teliwardi, chairman of the autonomous regional government, said that medical services for all ethnic groups in Xinjiang have improved constantly in recent years, at the press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Monday.

All 88 counties or cities in Xinjiang now have hospitals, anti-epidemic stations and health centers for women and kids. Each township has a hospital while each village has a clinic.

The autonomous regional chairman boasted the average number of doctors per thousand people and the average number of township-level sickbeds per thousand rural population are all above the national average level.

"No longer is there a shortage of doctors and medicine for all ethnic groups, especially those in rural area," he said.

The region now has 207 anti-epidemic stations and 17 prevention and control clinics (or centers), specializing in the treatment of endemic diseases. Endemic and contagious diseases that afflicted local people of all ethnicities in the past have been basically wiped out.

In the past eight years since 1994, with support from the central government, Xinjiang has implemented water-treatment projects for disease prevention and control. With an investment of 2.05 billion yuan (approximately US$250 million), the projects provide drinking water for 8.35 million people and 26.6 million livestock in rural and pastoral areas.

To date, the average life expectancy has been extended to 71.12 years in Xinjiang and the number of centenarians per million in Xinjiang ranks first in the country.

(Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2004)