Xu Guangchun came to Beijing for the National People's Congress (NPC), but his first stop was not the Great Hall of the People.

Xu, the Party secretary of central China's Henan Province, wanted to first pay a visit to Beijing's Changfeng Hospital, the first medical institution in the country to specialize in caring for migrant workers.

He had a lot of reasons to do so. Henan has the country's largest rural population and exports the most migrant workers of any province. Of the 70 million Henan residents whose household registrations list them as farmers, 17 million actually work in cities.

Changfeng Hospital, located in the capital city's Fengtai district, provides medical services to migrant workers in Beijing from Henan's Xinyang area. Unlike other medical facilities, the hospital offers migrant workers the chance to register for medical insurance in Beijing, allowing them to recover refunds and avoid long train rides home.

Most other migrant workers have to either travel home to recover refunded fees or delay treatment until they can go their home hospitals.

At a time when a hospital visit can easily cost 1,000 yuan (US$130), this program, which Xu describes as "the urbanization of the rural medical cooperative system", has relieved some Henan workers in Beijing of their health worries.

Under the program, Xinyang workers can join their hometown medical cooperative by paying just 10 yuan (US$1.2) at area's representative office at Chengfeng Hospital in Beijing. They also receive matching funds from the government.

Xinyang's rural health insurance system dates back to 2003. Local farmers can voluntarily join the system by paying the 10 yuan (US$1.2) annual fee to a medical fund. The central and local governments pay at least another 20 yuan (US$2.4) for each participant. And all participants are entitled to have a proportion of the fee they pay for any medical treatment refunded.

By the end of last year, more than half of Xinyang's farmers, or 410 million people, were registered for the program.

However, as more and more peasants travel to the cities to make a living, healthcare remains a problem.

Liu Xiang, a Xinyang native who runs a real estate company in Beijing, said that in the past the migrant workers who worked for his company were reluctant to join the medical cooperative program because they could only recover their refunds at designated hospitals in their hometowns.

"If they got sick in Beijing, they would have to foot the bill all by themselves, or go back home for medical treatment, both are hard choices for them," Liu said.

He added that one of his employees nearly died during the train ride back home because his health deteriorated so quickly.

Henan's provincial government is planning to further expand its rural medical insurance system to serve its workers in other cities.

(China Daily March 16, 2007)