Village health workers in China: reappraising the current situation. Health policy and planning 5

The unprecedented political and socio-economic changes in China during the 1980s have been a great challenge to the Chinese village health worker (VHW) programmes and have produced new situations for these programmes to face. Several policies have been launched by the Chinese health authorities to tackle the problems so that the number of VHWs has remained stable since 1985. However, some critical issues for the future development of the programmes remain. This paper gives an introduction to the current status of the Chinese VHW programmes and comments on the future trends of policy-making