Yanjun HAN, Xiaoming CHUAI

School of Emergency Management, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo 454000, China

Abstract This paper analyzed the key issues and challenges confronted in the governance of Village B in the non-epicenter area in rural areas of China during the COVID-19 pandemic. It clarified the weak points in the prevention and control of infectious diseases in Village B. A triple emergency management mechanism of "people-materials-environment" in rural areas should be established. It came up with constructive recommendations for scientifically and effectively responding to public health emergencies in rural non-epicenter areas, which is helpful to improve the rationality, legality and scientific effectiveness of the construction of emergency response mechanisms in rural areas.

Key words Rural areas of China, COVID-19, Infectious disease, Emergency management mechanism

1 Introduction

COVID-19 is a new infectious disease that has raged on a large scale in China after SARS. It is highly infectious, has a long incubation period, and there are virus carriers who have not developed the disease. However, like SARS, there is still no specific treatment drugs in a short period of time, which has brought tremendous pressure to the society and panic among the masses. According to epidemiological studies, the fight against infectious diseases may be a long-term project[1]. The rural population of China was about 560 million, accounting for 40.42%[2]. Approximately 140 million rural people went to work in cities, and the occurrence of COVID-19 was just during the home return period of the Spring Festival holiday. The flow of people was large, the health and medical conditions and awareness of protection were poor, and the emergency management capabilities were relatively insufficient, which brought huge challenges to the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the State Council of China issued an order to pay attention to the epidemic on January 20, 2020, a series of "hard core" strict operations in rural areas of Henan Province have quickly spread across the network, but there are still some key issues and challenges in the governance process. Village B in Henan Province has about 5 000 people and belongs to a large-populated village, but almost all young and middle-aged people are migrant workers. It is a very representative village in China. Therefore, we selected Village B as the research object, analyzed the challenges faced by rural non-epicenter areas, and proposed to establish a rural infectious disease emergency mechanism, which is favorable for making scientific and reasonable responses to various possible infectious diseases.

2 Challenges faced by rural areas in COVID-19 emergency management

According to our survey, the major difficulties for village B’s prevention and control work can be divided into three categories: people aspect, material aspect and environmental aspect (Table 1): shortage of staff and working staff in grassroots organizations; frequent interpersonal relationships; psychological pressure and insufficient experience of working staff; formalism of a small number of staff; short supply of medical supplies and daily necessities; weak medical and health conditions, traffic environment control not in place; network promotion not comprehensive; weak legal awareness,etc.

Table 1 Major challenges in the prevention and control of COVID-19 in rural areas

Among these challenges, in terms of people, the most important and difficult point is how to play an important role with grassroots party organizations; in terms of material, the most important and difficult point is how to improve the reserve of emergency supplies; in terms of environment, the most important and difficult point is how the network environment plays an important role. In the first place, grassroots party organizations must play their role in propaganda, organization, guidance, and role models. They must not only strengthen their own work style quality building, but also improve their ability to serve the masses, coordinate the relationship between epidemic prevention and control and production and life, and optimize rural publicity and education methods[3]. In the second place, it is necessary to focus on improving emergency response capabilities in rural areas and improving the security of emergency supplies. Only strong emergency security capabilities can win the victory faster and better. In the third place, with the continuous development of Internet technology, by June 2019, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 854 million. The rate of surfing the Internet through smartphones reached 99.1%[4], and basically everybody in rural areas now has a smartphone. The Internet will use its unprecedented ability to reconstruct the relationship between people, people and materials, and people and society, promote the formation of an all-media communication system, and profoundly affect social governance[5]. However, due to the generally low cultural quality in rural areas and insufficient knowledge of popular science, rural people are easy to believe in online rumors. Thus, it is very important to create a good network environment and use the Internet to popularize science to the villagers. The COVID-19 epidemic has fully exposed the "shortcomings" in the modernization of governance systems and governance capabilities in China’s public health. Science popularization is one of the "weaknesses", and the technical advantages of media integration can be used to promote the effectiveness of rural science popularization[6].

3 Recommendations for the construction of emergency mechanism for infectious diseases in rural areas

In response to the challenges in the epidemic of infectious diseases in non-epicenter areas in rural areas, we proposed to establish a triple emergency mechanism of "people-material-environment" (Fig.1). The management and control of people, materials, and the environment are often used in enterprise safety management to ensure safe production of the enterprise. In the emergency management of major infectious diseases in rural areas, although the non-epicenter areas are relatively safe, the health of the villagers can be better protected on the basis of ensuring people, materials, and the environment.

Fig.1 Emergency management mechanism of "people-material-environment" for rural infectious diseases

3.1 Personnel management

3.1.1Grassroots cadres. Rural grassroots party organizations play a huge role in the fight against COVID-19 in rural areas. The rural grassroots party organizations should strengthen their own quality, improve their ability to serve the masses, and coordinate the relationship between the prevention and control of infectious diseases and production and life. They should give full play to the role of a leader in the prevention and control of infectious diseases, organize daily prevention and control of infectious diseases, post propaganda slogans, and carry out activities such as learning day to eliminate formalism. In the prevention and control of the epidemic, the village head is the first commander and leader of the village, and should organize some cadres and volunteers to set up an infectious disease science group. On the premise of being a good example of prevention and control, the village head should conduct door-to-door publicity visits, explain policies, popularize knowledge to dispel fear, or use the Internet to conduct online popular science education and scientifically carry out infectious disease prevention and control.

3.1.2Grassroots doctors. It is necessary to improve emergency medical and health protection, and do a good job in introducing talents. In the daily work, it is necessary to assist the infectious disease popularization team, scientifically guide the villagers on how to prevent the occurrence and spread of infectious diseases, popularize the protection knowledge under the epidemic, reduce the risk of infection, and guide the villagers to dispel panic feeling when encountering similar symptoms, and seek medical treatment in time. In the season of high incidence of infectious diseases, it is necessary to carefully diagnose and investigate carefully to protect the safety of the village. During the epidemic, it is necessary to collect patient information, promote the disease response, and provide initial diagnosis and treatment,etc.Grassroots doctors in rural health centers and other medical units must first protect themselves in the prevention and control of the epidemic. They must not close clinics at will, not refuse giving treatment, and should report suspicious cases in time.

3.1.3Volunteers. The recruitment of volunteers should be based on a voluntary principle and mainly party members. It is necessary to adopt the standard of one volunteer serving 10-20 households and allocate them according to the actual situation. The daily work is to organize everyone to carry out health education and mental health education to spread positive energy. During the critical period of the epidemic, the main task is to help grassroots cadres carry out propaganda work, actively persuade return at intersections, and do a good job of disinfection and psychological counseling in the village, and so on. Every year, it is recommended to give award to volunteers who have made contributions

3.1.4Villagers. The responsibility of every village cadre, doctor, and volunteer is to protect the villagers, and the villagers also have the responsibility and obligation to protect themselves, and to protect themselves is to protect others. It is found that during the epidemic period, some residents were unable to distinguish the true and false news, and were more likely to believe in rumors, leading to bias in their cognition[7]. In Village B, this phenomenon is particularly obvious after the children return to their jobs in different places. Therefore, villagers should pay more attention to the content of science popularization undertaken online or offline in the village to understand what infectious diseases are and how to prevent them. At the same time, they must also learn how to identify rumors and ensure that they do not believe rumors and do not spread rumors. Those who go out to work in extraordinary times must take the initiative to report and isolate themselves when they return to the village. Those who have no experience of going out must also do not go out without special circumstances, so as to protect themselves, protect others, and protect the collective. It is recommended that emergency and health education courses be added to each grade of the village primary schools. Besides, it is recommended that the village committee organizes emergency and health education activities on a regular basis, and the villagers actively participate in learning related knowledge.

3.2 Material management

3.2.1Reserve and preparation of materials. In Village B, some shop owners donated materials, but only to service volunteers. It is recommended that the village sign relevant agreements with relevant suppliers to do a good job in the reserve work of emergency materials. Especially in the high-incidence period of infectious diseases, the reserves of medical prevention and control supplies such as masks, thermometers, disinfectants,etc.must meet the one-week consumption of all villagers in the village. It is required to rapidly mobilize what is needed for the next week within this week to ensure the quantity of protective equipment for the villagers and reduce panic. For residents’ daily needs, such as rice, noodles, vegetables,etc., there must be a special period of procurement channels and special personnel to purchase, control prices, and ensure the living needs of the villagers.

3.2.2Allocation of materials. For protective materials, in case of sufficiency, they should be equally distributed according to the number of people. However, in case of lack of materials, the village doctors, volunteers, and village cadres should be allocated first, but they should take the initiative to explain the situation to the villagers and strengthen mutual trust. For daily necessities, allocation should be based on needs, and substantial price increases are forbidden, and the items needed are booked in advance with the purchaser by phone or WeChat.

3.2.3Distribution of materials. The distribution of materials requires volunteers to provide door-to-door services to the families they are responsible for. It is recommended to distribute protective equipment to every household for free or at a low price every week to reduce crowd gathering and reduce cross-infection. For daily necessities, the volunteers will also provide free services to the door on demand.

3.3 Environment management

3.3.1Medical and health environment. The rural medical and health environment plays a key role in the prevention and control of rural infectious diseases. Improving the level of rural medical and health services and introducing medical and health personnel will help promote the establishment of a rural medical and health emergency system. Poor sanitation is conducive to the growth of bacteria and viruses, and is not conducive to the prevention and control of infectious diseases. Therefore, during the epidemic prevention and control period, it is necessary to attach great importance to the hygiene and environmental management of the villages. In addition to sweeping the floor in daily work, spray disinfection is also very necessary.

3.3.2Traffic environment. In rural areas, passenger cars are also an important means of transportation for some people. During the epidemic, the frequency of departures should be minimized or suspended to reduce the risk of virus transmission from the flow of people. For example, the 6th, 16th, and 26thof each month are the market days in Village B. Village cadres should focus on managing these days, strictly control the setting of stalls on market days, and persuade the stall owners and villagers to return to the market at important intersections. The decision of "closing the village" was adopted in extraordinary times, but because there are so many small roads in the rural areas that can even pass through the wheat fields, it is not feasible to simply break and block the road. It needs active cooperation of all villagers, and village cadres are required to meet the daily needs of the villagers as much as possible, and to reduce the movement of villagers as much as possible.

3.3.3Network environment. With the rapid development of the Internet, knowing the world without going out is both an opportunity and a challenge for epidemic prevention and control. Firstly, the village cadres should recommend reliable WeChat official accounts, Douyin accounts,etc.to the villagers. It is necessary to control the spread of rumors in the WeChat group chats built by the villagers, and ensure that the epidemic information in the WeChat group chats is released by authoritative institutions. For example, helping villagers pay attention to authoritative official accounts such as People’s Daily and CCTV News during the visits of popular science groups will help villagers see authoritative information in a timely manner. Secondly, village cadres should be good at discovering false information spread by villagers, dispelling rumors and stopping them in time. Thirdly, spreading positive and optimistic news in the group and the circle of friends every day will help the villagers eliminate their fears and overcome the epidemic. It is recommended to make good use of the positive role of the double-edged sword of the Internet in the prevention and control of major infectious diseases to create a good network environment in the village.

3.3.4Legal environment. During the epidemic prevention and control period, the science popularization team should be good at using "slogans", "big speakers", WeChat and other methods to popularize relevant laws. Firstly, the rumor monger will face legal sanctions. Secondly, although it is reasonable to "break or close roads", it is required to abide by the principle of "one break and three non-breaks", and stop the virus from being an important traffic function; rather than arbitrarily taking actions such as disconnecting and blocking roads. Thirdly, in the prevention and control of the epidemic, it is required to strictly punish the behavior of selling high prices of protective equipment. Fourthly, penalties should be imposed on those who conceal related symptoms and fail to report them. Creating a good legal environment is helpful to the maintenance of social order, and also conducive to winning the battle against epidemic prevention and control faster and better.

3.3.5Ideological environment. The level of rural residents’ awareness, behavior and attitude towards COVID-19 needs to be improved, and many villagers take negative attitudes[7]. Village B is a non-epicenter area, so this phenomenon is quite obvious. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the intervention of rural residents’ coping styles and psychological problems that affect the ideological environment. First of all, in daily science popularization, it is necessary to let villagers realize that infectious diseases are preventable. Next, it is recommended to let the villagers deeply understand from the ideology that self-protection is to reduce the burden for the country and to make a contribution to the country. The effective theory of communication believes that people’s behaviors and thoughts are influenced by the group or the collective. Therefore, under the strong call and leadership of the village cadres, the identity of the villagers and the sense of collective belonging will help everyone to exercise self-discipline to safeguard common interests.

3.3.6Cultural environment. The cultural environment of epidemic prevention and control propaganda and education in rural areas is characterized by "rural slogans" and "rural loudspeakers". Although the economy is developing rapidly and the means of communication are constantly changing, slogans still play the functions of dissemination, education, encouragement and guidance. However, only those meaningful slogans with authentic and credible propaganda content, clear propaganda subject, propaganda attitude and appropriate language can be widely recognized, accepted and cooperated by the villagers[8]. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the level of production and management of Chinese rural slogans, and to purify the rural language environment. The rural loudspeaker has endured for nearly 70 years, indicating that it is particularly adapted to rural areas[9]. In the event of a major emergency, the rural loudspeaker can deliver all kinds of information needed by the village in a timely and rapid manner. In the rural cultural environment, it is recommended to improve "rural slogans" and "rural loudspeakers", include them into the rural revitalization strategy, overall planning, and implementation, so that the "rural slogans" and "rural loudspeakers" can keep up with the times and play their great role.

4 Conclusions

The research on the emergency mechanism of infectious diseases, especially the emergency mechanism of public health emergencies, still remains at the early stage in rural areas. The most important and difficult points in the prevention and control of infectious diseases lie in how the grassroots party organizations play an important role, how to improve the work related to emergency supplies, and how to play an important role in the network environment in the Internet age. In this study, we constructed an emergency management mechanism of "people-materials-environment" to avoid the further expansion of major infectious disease incidents in rural areas, and help rural areas to quickly carry out education and practical exercises related to the prevention and control of infectious disease.