Although more and more farmers are shaking off poverty and building up savings, they risk losing it all if they fall sick, the article said.

Illness has become farmers' "biggest fear."

Many cannot afford to see doctors because the price of medical services has far outstripped their incomes.

According to the article, farmers' per capita income increased from around 680 yuan (US$82) to 2,210 yuan (US$267) or so in the last decade.

But the average outpatient charge has rocketed from 10.9 yuan (US$1.30) to 79 yuan (US$9.50). The cost of hospitalization has also jumped from 47 yuan (US$5.70) to 289 yuan (US$34.90) over the same period.

Farmers have poorer health and other welfare services than city dwellers. The disparity in such services is even bigger than their income gap, said the article.

More than two thirds of China's medical services cater to residents in cities, who account for only 15 percent of the country's population.

In the countryside, the numbers of patients who cannot buy medicines and families impoverished by disease are on the rise.

A survey in East China's Anhui Province shows families hit by illness account for about half of the poor rural families in the province.

Preventive medicine experts estimate that about 80 per cent of people with HIV in China live in the countryside.

Poor medicare services in rural areas not only affect farmers' health but also hinder the nation in realizing the goal of building a better-off society nationwide, said the article.

China has built a primary and multi-layered medicare system which helps control diseases and sustains social development.

However, rural health services in general have improved little in recent years and are increasingly lagging behind urban health services. The article attributes the problem to inefficient management and a lack of funding.

Most rural hospitals are run by local township governments unfamiliar with the medical profession and too poor to finance hospitals. Many rural and township hospitals are dogged by ageing equipment and insufficient staff. Some rural governments even place unqualified staff in these hospitals because of the brain drain to the cities.

To address the problem, the central government decided last October that governments at all levels should gradually increase their public health expenditure.

In January, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Agriculture jointly formulated a scheme to build a rural cooperative health service system.

Under the scheme, the system will be co-financed by governments, rural collective units and individual farmers, and will mainly provide relief for farmers suffering serious diseases. Farmers can participate in the program voluntarily. The new program offers farmers benefits from the money they spend on health, said the article.

(China Daily April 15, 2003)