The New Dominion

This is The New Dominion’s Xinjiang Health News Roundup for the following week. Only three stories this time, one involving sleep disorder research in Urumqi, another involving AIDS in Xinjiang’s penitentiary system, and the third involving supply and demand for medically trained experts in Xinjiang medical institutions.

For “World Sleep Day,” which occurred on the 21st, the Urumqi Sleep Research and Treatment Center released results of an ongoing medical examination which clearly indicated rising incidences of insomnia disorders among city residents. In 2007, the number of residents diagnosed with sleep disorders increased threefold from the previous year, and thenumber of people hospitalized for sleep problems increased from about 10 every month into the 20s and 30s. One interesting and alarming finding of the Center’s research is that over 60 percent residents with sleep disorders are female, and of those female residents 90% are married women between 25 - 40 years old.

Xinjiang prisons and reeducation camps will prominent beneficiaries of the China Olympics AIDS Prevention Capabilities Improvement Project. Prisons and reeducation camps located in Xinjiang have seen alarming increases in AIDS patients over the past few years, and thus are slated to be a part of China’s nationwide AIDS prevention project, mainly through the improvement of the skills and knowledge of medical staff, psychological counselors, and legal assistance employees stationed at Xinjiang penitentiaries.

Reporter Yang Jie attended a recruitment meeting for recently graduated medical students and observed first hand the paucity of employees at grassroots level medical institutions. Hospital directors and vice-directors  from small and mid sized cities across Xinjiang such as Shache, Qitai, Jinghe, and Hutubi were all seen at the meeting offering the recently graduated students a number of employment benefits to entice prospective recruits to their institutions. The director of the employment guidance center at Xinjiang Medical University did say that the number of graduates accepting jobs at grassroots level institutions has increased greatly in the recent years, however, this increase has done little to catch up with rapidly increasing demands for medical workers that has largely been brought about by the rapid economic development of smaller and mid-sized cities in Xinjiang.