Health service capacity of village clinics in the northern mountain area of Guangdong province

Objective To understand the basic construction and health service ability of village clinics in the northern mountain area of Guangdong province and to discover problems and weaknesses so as to provide reference for promoting the development of village clinics in the under-developed regions.Methods Questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used to investigate 130 village clinics and 130 country doctors in 19 towns located in the north of Guangdong.Totally 729 prescriptions in two weeks of 2010 were sampled for evaluation.Results Village clinics in the north of Guangdong could provide basic health services,but housing construction,equipment and other basic conditions were poor.The overall quality of country doctors was not high and the number of patient consultants was declining.Village health development trends and other issues were polarized.Conclusion To improve the health service ability of village clinics in under-developed regions,we suggest that financial support to village clinics from various ways should be strengthened,the basic conditions of village clinics should be improved,country doctors should be regularly trained,appropriate technology of a combination of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine should be promoted.