Womens healthcare in China

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the goal of healthcare programmes has been to provide care to every member of the population and to make maximum use of limited health-care personnel, equipment, and financial resources. The emphasis has been on preventive rather than curative medicine on the premise that preventive medicine is "active" while curative medicine is "passive." The public health system is overseen by the Ministry of Health and the modernization of the system is studied internationally.

The end of the famed barefoot doctor system based in the People's Communes and the increasing privatization of medicine, often poorly regulated, have made corruption and inefficiency in the delivery of health services serious problems. Mistaken political policies led to the starvation of millions during the Great Leap Forward; epidemic disease rebounded during the dislocations of the Cultural Revolution, which seriously harmed public health in China. The effective public health work in controlling epidemic disease during the early years of the PRC and, after reform began in 1978, the dramatic improvements in nutrition greatly improved the health and life expectancy of the Chinese people. The 2000 WHO World Health Report - Health systems: improving performance found that China's health care system before 1980 performed far better than countries at a comparable level of development, since 1980 ranks much lower than comparable countries.