Mu Haiying, Heilongjiang Health Worker       

Mu Haiying is a young health worker in China’s Heilongjiang Province, where Global Health Action partnered with the Provincial Public Health Bureau to train health care workers and educate rural women on topics related to women’s health, reproductive health, disease prevention, and domestic violence.

Ms. Mu graduated from Heihe Medical Technical School in 1999, where she majored in primary health care and maternal and child health (MCH). She works at Yaotun Township Hospital in Sunwu County, and her responsibilities include providing pre- and post-natal care and child health-check ups and referring pregnant women to the County’s MCH Hospital.

She attended the GHA-Heilongjiang training organized by Sunwu’s County Level Health Manager and learned to talk more effectively to rural women about reproductive and related health issues and to provide the women with accurate and comprehensive information about HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, reproductive tract infections, domestic violence, and other women’s health issues. After completing the training, she received a stack of education booklets to distribute to her rural patients.

She says the training was very effective and important, especially on issues of domestic violence and HIV/STI transmission, and the booklets contain a lot of useful information. The biggest barrier she has to overcome is that most rural women are not very concerned about their health. They don’t want to go to see the doctor due to their busy schedule with farm work and they regard gynecological diseases as minor illnesses. However, according to her patient records, 70% of married women have had vaginal infections and gynecological illnesses, and 15-20% of them have some erosion of the cervix.

Those numbers keep Ms. Mu riding her bicycle or a small motorcycle to reach and educate rural women, traveling as far as 16 kilometers each way to the more remote villages. With bad roads and in bad weather, it can take her a whole day to get there, but she perseveres.