Health Service Support in Torrid Areas

The torrid area in China refers to the hot and damp areas south to the Yangtze River, including Zhejiang, Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provices and southern parts of Yunnan and Jiangsu provices. It covers one million sq.km, accounting for 10 percent of the country's total area. These areas feature long hot days, high temperature, much rain and great humidity. There are so many harmful animals and plants, widely-distributed sources of epidemic diseases and many kinds of special injuries and diseases in torrid environment that the health of the service members is heavily affected. In the past dozens of years, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (CPLA) has done epidemiological survey in torrid areas, mastered the disease chart and the epidemic rules of main diseases and taken some effective health service support measures to lower morbidity and strengthen fighting capacity.