Yin Zuluan, a 34-year-old village doctor, was on the way to visit a sick new mother who lives in a remote mountainous area as Premier Wen Jiabao presented the government work report on Sunday morning.

It took her more than two hours to walk to the home of the woman, who gave birth 10 days earlier, leaving no time for her to watch TV coverage of the report.

So news of the premier's pledge to help doctors like her came as a welcome surprise.

"I hope governments can give us more money to support our work," said Yin, from Guangsong village of Longchuan County, Yunnan Province.

With a monthly salary of 120 yuan (US$14), she is in charge of providing clinical medical treatment and care to at least 600 villagers.

Many villagers live in isolated areas, which means that she can sometimes only treat one patient a day.

She can receive another 120 yuan (US$14) a month from a three-year State project working with families of 32 HIV/AIDS sufferers from the village.

But it still means her total salary is only one-tenth that of a doctor working in cities.

She can get some extra money from the sale of medicines to villagers.

However, many of her patients are so poor that they usually have to admit they have no money to give her after being treated.

Her village, like hundreds of others in remote areas of Yunnan Province, is seriously stricken by drug abuse and HIV/AIDS.

With little income, many villagers simply have to wait for death, Yin said.

She told China Daily she wanted the premier to help not only doctors, but the villagers themselves.

"I want him to give more financial support to these poor families to help them develop the economy and increase their income," Yin said.

The premier said that, by 2008, a new co-operative medical care system and medical assistance system would be in place in all rural areas.

The co-operative system, which will pool money from the central government, local governments and villagers to establish a foundation, will be used to cover parts of the medical costs of farmers.

However, the system, which reportedly has covered nearly 180 million rural residents in China, has not been implemented yet in the village of Yin Zuluan.

In China, there are nearly 900 million residents in rural areas. Due to a lack of money, about 60 to 80 per cent of those who pass away in western and central parts of China die at home instead of in hospitals, official investigations reveal.

Even in the areas where the co-operative system has already been established, residents are still very hesitant in going to see doctors.

For example, in Xishihe village of Junan County of East China's Shandong Province, farmers have to pay a lot even if they have been covered by the system, said Xu Youtian, the doctor of the village.

The co-operative system is only designed to pay part of the costs for medicines, which means the remaining cost of the overall treatment has to be paid by farmers, Xu noted.

Source: China Daily