Chapter 2001

Currently, the income of the common people is not high, but their burden is still very heavy. Chongjin County is an agricultural county; for many years, the majority of its fiscal revenue has relied on agricultural taxes and various levies and surcharges, so one can imagine the burden on the farmers.

Although the central government has now issued documents to abolish agricultural taxes and levies and surcharges, it has also provided a five-year buffer period. Therefore, Chongjin County has not yet abolished these taxes and levies.

Su Xinghui plans to officially abolish agricultural taxes and levies and surcharges in Chongjin County starting next year. Although Chongjin County will lose more than half of its traditional sources of fiscal revenue after these two items are canceled, Su Xinghui is very confident that he can make up for these two revenue streams—and far exceed them—by relying on income from other areas.

Of course, Su Xinghui must also find ways to increase farmers' income now. This method is to let farmers increase their labor income, and the main channel is to repair the embankments. Now is the slack farming season, and most farmers are idle at home. Letting them participate in repairing the embankments can both speed up the project progress and allow them to have some extra income.

Now, the able-bodied laborers among the common people in the lake area have basically joined the embankment repair team. They have all suffered deeply from the scourge of floods, and they all know that the county government repairing the embankments is a good thing for them. Even if they were asked to provide voluntary labor, they would be willing, let alone being paid to repair the embankments. They are all working with great enthusiasm.

Seeing this scene, Su Xinghui felt very gratified in his heart.

The common people in the lake area have another huge hidden danger, and that is schistosomiasis.

Schistosomiasis is an infectious disease that causes huge harm and is widely prevalent in China's lake areas. The Yanglan Lake area is naturally no exception; this is also a high-incidence area for schistosomiasis.

Especially in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic, the number of schistosomiasis patients in China's lake areas reached as high as tens of millions, and the population threatened by infection reached hundreds of millions, accounting for a fraction of the national population. As long as the common people contracted schistosomiasis, they would immediately fall into poverty due to illness, and it would even endanger their lives. Countless common people fell into a miserable situation because of schistosomiasis.

At that time, the Great Man wrote a poem to describe the situation then:

Green hills and clear waters are in vain, what can Hua Tuo do about the little worms!

In a thousand villages, vines grow over the ruins; in ten thousand households, ghosts sing in the desolation.

Sitting on the ground, one travels eighty thousand li a day; patrolling the sky, one looks at a thousand rivers from afar.

The Cowherd wants to ask about the plague god; joys and sorrows alike follow the passing waves.

From this poem, one can see the huge harm and threat caused by schistosomiasis to the common people in the lake area. Later, through the all-out prevention and control efforts of the Chinese government, schistosomiasis was largely eradicated over several decades, and the epidemic situation of schistosomiasis was greatly alleviated.

However, in the Yanglan Lake area, because the economy here is not developed, the schistosomiasis epidemic here is still relatively serious.

According to Su Xinghui's visits, in the lake area of Chongjin County, at least over 100,000 people have had schistosomiasis, and the number of people currently suffering from schistosomiasis has also reached tens of thousands. Some have already turned into chronic schistosomiasis; the physical health of such patients has been severely devastated, and they have gradually lost their ability to work.

Because those who most frequently come into contact with epidemic water are often the able-bodied laborers in the family, it can be said that if one person gets sick, the whole family falls into poverty.

Su Xinghui has seen many patients with late-stage schistosomiasis; they are sallow and thin, but their abdomens are as big as drums. For such patients, the condition is too serious, and their families have no money to treat them, so they can only wait for death.

Seeing such patients, Su Xinghui felt very sad, and he made up his mind that he must basically eradicate schistosomiasis during his tenure.

Of course, the urgent priority now is to treat these late-stage schistosomiasis patients. If they are not treated, they might really die in pain. Su Xinghui absolutely cannot watch such things happen in the place under his jurisdiction; that would be his dereliction of duty.