[The system of health assistants in Shaanxi during the Republican period].

To tackle plague, in the 21st year of the Republic of China (1932), the government of Shaanxi province, established the "Shaanxi Department of Epidemic Prevention" and set up health assistant system at the grassroots level. As the main promoter and executor of rural epidemic prevention, the health assistants played a significant role in the formation of public health knowledge propaganda, the formation of public health idea, public environmental hygiene investigation and popularization of health and epidemic prevention work. Health assistant system, as the initiation of modern Shaanxi health, marking the gradual moving forward to its modernization, exerting a positive role and, at the same time, demonstrating that the development of modern public health needs the improvement of comprehensive national strength and the simultaneous construction of political civilization.