AN EYE IN THE EAST

    

A blog I've discovered in the past couple of days is the beautifully illustrated French site, Un Oeil sur la Chine (An Eye on China). This photo comes from a post on the state of the country's rural health system. Last week 2,000 people ransacked a medical centre in the south-west of the country after claiming that staff had allowed a young boy to die because his family couldn't afford to pay for treatment. Some background from a NYT report:

Medical costs are an enormously sensitive issue for tens of millions of people in Chinese cities and hundreds of millions in the countryside who have no medical insurance and no public safety net to cover soaring health care costs.

The government, controlled by the Communist Party, once offered rudimentary medical care for nominal prices in the countryside. But hospitals were left largely to fend for themselves in the market economy of the 1990s. Many ceased providing even emergency care for people who could not pay fees in cash in advance.

In short, a side of the great leap forward that we don't hear much about. Un oeil sur la Chine is going to be one of my regular reads in future. (Take a look at the images in the piece on the one-child-per-family policy.)