Understaffed and underfunded clinics stand half-empty in parts of the Chinese countryside even as hospitals in major cities heave under an unprecedented Covid-19 wave - an illustration of the stark disparities in the country's healthcare system.
Visits by AFP journalists in the past two weeks have revealed sharp differences in demand for urban and rural hospitals in parts of northern China as many in the countryside head to big cities for a quality of care they simply can't get closer to home.
Yet in the neglected rural town of Xin'an, the sparsely equipped local hospital was operating at well below full capacity. "What we are seeing in rural China epitomises the lack of progress in China's healthcare reform," said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council of Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan US think tank.People dissatisfied with the poor quality of rural healthcare will bypass to seek care in urban hospitals.
A local shopkeeper in Xin'an said a Covid outbreak had swept through the settlement of around 30 000 people in December, but"the worst of it has passed". In Tangshan - a smaller industrial city of 7.7 million people - the scene was calmer than that in Tianjin about two hours away.
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