On the evening of June 30, 1958, Chairman Mao, who was inspecting Hangzhou, saw a report in the People's Daily that "Yujiang, Jiangxi, an area of major schistosomiasis, has become the first administrative county to eliminate schistosomiasis."
Three years ago, Chairman Mao came to Hangzhou to investigate schistosomiasis and learned that young adults lost their labor force after infection and had difficulty sleeping and eating.
After reading the report, Chairman Mao laughed like a child and could not sleep at night. The next morning, Shi Xing dafa, gladly picked up his pen, and wrote "Seven Laws and Two Songs : Sending the Plague God" in one go.
Chairman Mao, who never wanted to publish his poems, went so far as to change his previous style and take the initiative to write a letter to Hu Qiaomu, president of the People's Daily, clearly hoping that these two poems would be published.
Why did schistosomiasis make Chairman Mao so worried? As a great man who points out the country and the mountains and rebukes the fangs, no matter how many tricks the enemy has, he can laugh at it as a "paper tiger".
But in the face of schistosomiasis, Chairman Mao has repeatedly called on all members of the party to unite to eliminate it at many congresses. The reason for this is that he always keeps the "people" in mind.
In 1949, when the Battle of The Shanghai River Crossing was about to begin, our army conducted cross-crossing training in the nearby waters, and as a result, more than 30,000 people's sons and soldiers, who had always been full of life, actually had fever, cough, abdominal pain and other symptoms, which directly affected the combat effectiveness, and were later found to be infected by schistosomiasis.
At that time, the medical conditions could not be cured, and once infected with male infertility and female infertility, they had to lose the ability to work and had a high mortality rate. In those days of relying on the sky to eat, a person had no ability to work, and there was no difference between being paralyzed in bed.
According to historical records, a village in Jiangxi, only more than a hundred years, due to the ravages of schistosomiasis, thousands of people in the village, by 1954 there were only 2 people left in the village.
The infectivity of schistosomiasis is even more invincible, the only host is the snail, but cattle and sheep and other poultry will also be infected, and the excrement that enters the river can pollute the water quality, and people and animals are not spared.
Because of this, in the second year after the founding of New China, a national survey was conducted, and the survey results showed that schistosomiasis covered more than 12 provinces in the south, and 100 million people directly or indirectly lived at the risk of schistosomiasis, at that time, the mainland had a total population of only 500 million, which meant that nearly 20% of the population could be in danger of life at any time.
Seeing such data, can Chairman Mao, who has always put everything about the masses first, not be worried?
On September 9, 1951, in order to win the battle, Mao Zedong personally drafted the "Instructions of the Central Committee on Strengthening Health, Epidemic Prevention and Medical Work", which set out the goals and clear tasks, and used the strength of the whole country to eliminate it.
For the handling of an event, dialectics tells us that there are three stages, before, during, and after the event.
The same is true for the prevention and control of schistosomiasis.
(1) Beforehand: control the source (2) During the event: cut off the transmission route (3) After the fact: study the treatment plan.
At that time, the whole country brainstormed and came up with many good methods, especially for the only host snail.
According to records, the cost of eliminating snails with drugs is as high as five hundred yuan per mu, and if the 12 southern provinces all adopt this method, the mainland will not be able to come up with this money at a time when it is in ruins.
What to do? Chairman Mao personally instructed that "we must give full play to the advantages of the large number of people and the great strength of the people and carry out artificial snail eradication."
At that time, with a hoe and a shovel, the production team mustered up enough energy to dig out a hoe of soil and a hoe of soil, and buried the nails. In the face of some rivers, the bend is changed to straight, and the probability of schistosomiasis parasitism is reduced by increasing the water flow.
The Yujiang River in Jiangxi, mentioned at the beginning, invested 40,000 people at that time, dug the ground and dug a ditch together, and it took only two years to extinguish the nail screw three times, and obtained unexpected results.
40,000 people do not take it, brushing and waving hoes, such a cohesion is so magnificent!
Of course, the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases is indispensable to the efforts of doctors, and in the face of the serious shortage of rural doctors, Chairman Mao made the "626" directive in 1965 and trained a large number of "barefoot doctors".
In our view today, barefoot doctor seems to be a derogatory term, but in the era of serious lack of medical resources at that time, most of the rural treatment was still continuing Lu Xun's treatment method of using "blood steamed buns" as a medicine primer, and with the emergence of barefoot doctors, rural medical care slowly moved towards the current formalization.
Academician Li Lanjuan, whom we know, is one of the "barefoot doctors".
It was precisely because of Chairman Mao's policy decision, the adoption of measures that organically combine the party organizations, scientists, and the masses of the people, and the participation of all the staff, that the battle against schistosomiasis was won.
By the end of the 1950s, the results were remarkable. By 1985, the southern provinces had declared the eradication of schistosomiasis, and today, it can be completely cured.