Barefoot doctors became a part of the Cultural Revolution, which also radically diminished the influence of the Ministry of Health, which was filled with Western-trained doctors. Still, barefoot doctors continued to introduce Western medicine to rural areas by merging it with Chinese medicine. With the onset of market-oriented reforms after the Cultural Revolution, political support for barefoot doctors dissipated, and "health-care crises of peasants substantially increased after the system broke down in the 1980s." Despite the fact that the official barefoot doctor system came to an end, the legacy of the barefoot doctors inspired the 1978 World Health Organization conference on primary health care and the resulting Alma Ata Declaration.