Yang Si, a village doctor of Miao ethnic group, stands in Gaoba Village of Tongle Village in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, September 21, 2017. Yang has been a village doctor for 16 years and she witnessed the improvement of local transportaion. It is becoming easier for her to visit remote patients. Due to harsh environmental conditions such as the stony desertification and mountainous landform, Guangxi has long been a less developed area in China. In recent years, local government carried out many measurements for the poverty alleviation work. Tens of thousands of officials and staff members helped local people build roads, repair houses, improve education and industry development. In 2016, more than 1.11 million people were liberated from poverty. The poverty-stricken population in the region has declined from 10.12 million in 2010 to current 3.638 million. Photo: Xinhua

Officials from the Chinese national health department said that they had ordered local authorities to launch an investigation into the collective resignation of 64 doctors in Central China's Henan Province. 

"We attach great importance to the case and have ordered the Health Commission of Henan Province to immediately investigate and verify the situation. No matter what the problem is, it should be rectified immediately," Song Shuli, spokesperson for China's National Health Commission said at a press conference on Tuesday morning, according to a report by The Paper.

The remarks came after recent reports said that 64 village doctors had resigned in Tongxu county, Henan. 

A version of a letter of resignation with the signatures and fingerprints of 36 doctors in Zhusha, Tongxu, circulated on the internet over the weekend and quickly became a topic of discussion. 

According to the letter, the reasons for the doctors' resignation were increasingly intense working pressure and salaries so low that the doctors could not even feed themselves.

The letter also criticized bureaucracy and corruption at the local level. "Although more and more money has been allocated by the superior administrations, local authorities kept skimming it and delaying our wages," the letter said.

The Tongxu government released a statement on Monday in response to the doctors' resignation. They said that after an investigation, they found that the problems mentioned by the doctors did not exist. 

However, the government admitted that there had been some problems with delayed allocation of public health project subsidies. 

Subsidies for village doctors in Zhusha town are supposed to be 5.07 yuan ($0.7) for each diagnosis and treatment, exceeding the national standard of 5 yuan. The subsidies for the first half year of 2019 will be allocated to doctors by July 20, said the Tongxu government. 

Media reports said that another 28 doctors in Dagangli village in Tongzu had also resigned. Their joint resignation letter said nearly the same things as that of the 36 Zhusha doctors, according to guancha.cn.