Charlatan sells medicine to poor

Charlatan sells medicine to poor, originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/chinapix/.

A sales man tries to sell a health potion that he claims can cure most ailments, especially pain in the town of Luntai in China's western Xinjiang province. The potion is made of scorpions, ants, snakes and one bear. In the early 1980s, the highly successful decentralisation and privatisation of the economy resulted in dismantling of its health care system. China reduced the central government’s share of health care spending from 32 per cent in 1978 to 15 per cent in 1999, transferring this function to provincial and local authorities. This action favoured wealthy coastal provinces and led to growing disparities between urban and rural health care.