With a population of 1.3 billion, China needs additional one million nurses, according to the Chinese medical specialists.

Liu Tai, Director of Neuroscience with the No.1 Hospital affiliated to Guangxi College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said the country needed more nurses to deal with the increasing number of people suffering from chronic diseases and an aging population.

Chinese citizens above the age of 60 makes up 10 percent of China's population, said the country's fifth population census, conducted in November 2000. The country has only 1.35 million nurses at present.

Liu blamed Chinese people's conventional concept of valuing medical treatments instead of nursing care for the shortage of nurses in the country.

Chen Dan, a nurse with the hospital, said most of her classmates had changed to do jobs other than nurses because of heavy workloads, low payments and bad working conditions.

"A shortage of nurses might damage relations between patients and medical workers," said Liu, who suggested measures such as advancing education of nursing specialties, reducing workload and improving their treatment to attract more people to the profession.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2006)