bronwyn duke on the wittenoom asbestos mine in australia. to improve healthcare in rural china by giving thousands of people basic medical training and sending them out to work in villages. they were known as the barefoot doctors. gordon liu was one of them. i became a barefoot doctor after i graduated from high school simply because i was one of the most educated young persons. i had no training, no experience or knowledge in medicine whatsoever. voiceover: chairman mao says the sick must be healed and has caused a real shake—up in china's health services. voiceover: every commune, they say, now has hospitals and clinics providing medical attention where there was none before. perhaps the most striking development has been the training of a vast corps of a barefoot doctors. they have their farm work to do as well, and their training is limited but even if you can teach people simple hygiene, it saves countless lives. we provided very basic services to our villages, mostly for the common cold conditions, infections, diarrhoea, things like th