[Health work in the water resource construction sites in the 1950s : from the perspective of superstructure]

In the early period of the New China, a massive large-scale water conservancy project was constructed by the Yellow River and the Huai River management. The health problems in water conservancy sites affected the health of migrant workers and the development of the project seriously. To solve these problems, a series of effective and efficient policies and measures were taken by the Communist Party of China and the governments at all levels, involving the holistic top-level design, policy-making and implementation, strengthening centralised leadership and organisation, building-up medical networks, training local medical staff for acupuncture, and focusing on prevention and treatment with the mass base. These measures effectively improved the health work in the construction site by reducing the epidemic and frequently-occurring diseases, changing the dirty and disorderly appearance of the construction sites, improving health awareness and hygiene consciousness, and constructing orderly and clean site communities. As a result, these measures protected the workforce, improved the medical network in the socialism system, cohered the medical construction force by holding both traditional Chinese doctors and western medicine physicians together, reshaped the new workforce, reinforced the management to the grass-root society and therefore, consolidated the new power.