Health System Reconstruction in Dujiangyan after Wenchuan Earthquake: Experience and Outcome

This article focused on the health system reconstruction after Wenchuan earthquake in Dujiangyan, China, and intended to provide some experience and knowledge gained. Pre-quake conditions of health system, damage caused by the earthquake, and post-quake efforts on reconstruction and outcomes achieved were presented and analyzed. After three years of post-quake reconstruction, not only no severe epidemics occurred in the disaster area, the capacity of health system was also recovered and upgraded rapidly. On the basis of the improvement in infrastructure and hardware and software facilities, the number of outpatient and emergency visits, operations, discharges, and other major indicators for health service capacity greatly improved compared to the pre-quake times. The incidence rates of Class A, B, and C infectious diseases as well as respiratory, gastro-intestinal, and arthropod-borne and natural focal infectious diseases also appeared varying degrees of declines. Compared to 2008, the life expectancy in Dujiangyan increased by 9.23 years in 2011, the infant mortality decreased 3.22‰ , and the maternal mortality decreased 12.80/104. It could be justifiably concluded that the efficient and orderly post-quake reconstruction has played a huge role in enhancing the restoration of health system in Dujiangyan.