Taiyuan city -- capital city of North China's Shanxi province -- will expand the education and special training of rural doctors and comprehensively improve its rural health services, to meet the growing demand for health care from countryside residents. 

Under the latest rural doctor training plan issued by the city, Taiyuan will establish a team of rural doctors having received a medium-level polytechnic education and above and with a practicing (assistant) physician license and a high standard of professionalism. 

Officials said that in order to realize its goal, Taiyuan will carry out on-the-job education for rural doctors aged below 50, who have not received medium-level polytechnic education and above. Rural doctors aged above 50 will be encouraged to participate in medical education.

The city will encourage graduates of clinical, rural medicine and traditional Chinese medicine majors in colleges and vocational schools to enter the rural doctor program through open recruitment.

Further, it will entrust designated schools at city and provincial level to carry out the targeted training of rural doctors to expand their numbers.

Meanwhile, the city will promote internet-based rural doctor training based on national grassroots health capacity improvement training project platforms, as well as various social remote training resources, so as to enhance all local rural doctors' abilities to solve difficulties in daily diagnosis and treatment. 

In addition, Taiyuan People's Hospital will be designated as a city level training base for rural doctors, to plan and implement training targeted at rural doctors.