(November 14, 1958)
This document is hereby circulated to all 121 comrades in attendance. It is highly worthy of attention, as it concerns a nationwide issue: an overemphasis on work at the expense of people’s daily lives. This must immediately draw the attention of Party officials at all levels, beginning with those at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels. The guiding principle is to give equal weight to both work and living conditions.
Mao Zedong
4:00 A.M., November 14, 1958, at Guangshui
Chuan
Refers to the dispatch “Typhoid Epidemic Prevalent Throughout the Buguo Prefecture,” published in Issue No. 2630 of the Xinhua News Agency’s “Internal Reference” compiled and printed on November 11, 1958. The dispatch reports that since the onset of autumn this year, typhoid fever has been widespread in the Buguo Prefecture of Hebei Province, with cases of dysentery and gastroenteritis also occurring. The scale of the outbreak and its rapid spread are unprecedented; it has now affected twenty-one counties and cities and more than seventy villages across the entire prefecture. The epidemic has severely hampered steel production and the autumn harvest campaign. The primary cause of the outbreak is that certain leading cadres have focused solely on production while neglecting to properly guide and care for the collective living conditions of the masses. In some areas, hygiene standards in communal canteens have been poor, resulting in workers being unable to obtain hot meals or warm shelter. Coupled with insufficient sleep, this has weakened the physical resistance of commune members, allowing the disease to spread rapidly. Furthermore,
leadership in certain localities and the health authorities failed to promptly and actively organize both traditional Chinese and Western medical practitioners to provide treatment, and in some places there was even a shortage of medicines. These circumstances
have already attracted the attention of the Buguo Prefectural Party Committee, which is now taking effective measures to eradicate existing outbreaks, contain further spread, and prevent transmission.
[2]
Refers to the upcoming enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to be held in Wuchang.

Dispatch: Typhoid epidemic prevalent throughout F Prefecture—caused by focusing on work while neglecting daily life.
(JJ
See “Internal Reference,” November 11, 1958.
J2J
(I)
This is the title Mao Zedong revised for the Xinhua News Agency dispatch when ordering its circulation.
[2]
This is a note written by Mao Zedong following the Xinhua News Agency dispatch.