Health > Intergovernmental conference of Far-Eastern countries on rural hygiene : preparatory papers : report of French Indo-China

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in rural centres in charge of small subsidiary health services
(medical stations) with a monthly allowance to supplement
their earnings. A model contract has been drawn up and is in
use in Annam.
The overcrowding of the medical profession in the large
cities and even in the chief provincial capitals (one such town,
Cantho in Cochin-China, has five registered practitioners)
will undoubtedly lead doctors to seek a livelihood elsewhere
and will induce them to take up rural practice, for which they
are at present disinclined.
(b) Auxiliary Staff.
Until the last few years, the only midwives were those in
possession of the local diplomas conferred by the midwifery
schools at Hanoi and Cholon (for Annamites) and PnomPenh
and Vien-tian (for Cambodians and Laotians). This purely
local diploma was awarded after a two years’ course of theoretical
and practical studies, and the teaching was sometimes given
in the language of the country. The standard of general education
required for admittance to the schools was quite elementary.
As planned, this system turned out native midwives who did,
and, indeed, are still doing, excellent work, but whose standard
of general education and technical training was below that
which is now possible. The considerable development of women’s
education and the taste for study shown by the Annamite
girls have made it possible to introduce a system of university
training leading up to the State midwifery diploma. Girls
wishing to take up such studies are required to have passed
through a higher elementary school. Their general education
enables them to follow and profit by the full course of training
given at the Higher School of Medicine by the Professor of
Clinical Obstetrics. These “ State-certificated ” midwives
will gradually take the place of the local midwives, the recruiting
of whom has already been discontinued in Tongking and will
soon be discontinued in Cochin-China.
In all, the Medical Services employ 330 Indo-Chinese midwives,
of whom approximately 200 are in Cochin-China, where most
of them are employed as rural native-trained midwives. (In