Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

In the early 1960s, China was in dire poverty.  People were dying from the Great Famine.  There were not enough doctors or hospitals to take care of the sick.  The life expectancy was only 35 years.  Infant mortality was 200 per 1,000.  There was no money to throw at the medical problems.  China came up with an inexpensive stop gap solution.  It trained tens thousands of so called barefoot doctors and sent them out to the rural areas.  

These medical practitioners were called barefoot doctors because they treated patients who mostly worked in the rice paddies barefooted.  The practitioners did not have higher education, maybe barely finished high school.  They were taught simple western medicine along with traditional Chinese medicine.  They learned wound cleaning and infection control.  They learned and then taught good hygiene.  They learned to give the appropriate vaccines available at that time.

By concentrating on primary care, preventive medicine and vaccination, these barefoot doctors did a great job for the country.  By 1982, the life expectancy had increased from 35 to 60.  The infant mortality had decreased from 200 per 1000 to 34 per 1000!

Today with the COVID-19, we have over 130,000 deaths and many more who were treated in ICUs at a cost of thousands of dollars per day per patient.  As we have found, most of those who die or needed ICU care had medical conditions.  Diabetes, hypertension and obesity are some of the medical problems that make someone a high risk for complications from this disease.  Better primary care and preventive care would have decreased the number of hospitalization and deaths.

We spent more money on healthcare per capita than any industrialized country and get the worst results.  We spend a lot of money on expensive machines and drugs.  If we spend more and target primary care and prevention, we would do much better all the time, not just during this pandemic.  We can also do better by addressing the inequality of our system.

Of course, the general public has do its job as well.  It cost almost nothing to wear masks, social distance and wash our hands.  But many of us are not willing to do these simple, inexpensive things.  Many also refuses to take vaccines.  We end up paying for expensive treatments.  It is the old saying, pay little now or pay a lot more later.