| Antibiotics
and painkillers are widely available “over the counter” in pharmacies
throughout China, and pills are likely to be much cheaper than an IV. The
second reason is that there is a belief among Chinese medical staff that
drugs administered directly into the bloodstream work faster than drugs
that must be processed through that time consuming middleman, the human
stomach.
My headmaster
cannot translate my diagnosis.
"You have
a bad cold!" she says.
I have a
fever of 101.4 F and a general ill will towards all humans. I stand
in a room with six other people to receive my shot in the rump. In a country
where public baths are a fact of life, there is little privacy. I tell
my headmaster:
"I want
her to wear gloves. Gloves." I mime.
My headmaster
looks at me like I’m growing another head. She explains, and the nurses
squint.
"No gloves,
no injection." I say/mime.
When you're
getting ready to take your pants down in front of your boss and five Chinese
nurses, you can get pretty demanding.
The nurses
have no gloves. I give a bottle of hand sanitizer to the nurse, who
smears it disgustedly on her hands and immediately goes to the sink to
wash it off. I all but physically restrain her.
I get my
shot and the nurse washes her hands. The same nurse then gives me my
IV. Not wanting to go through the same thing again, I cover my own hands
and arms with sanitizer. I mentally assemble a kit of things for me and
other expatriates in need of a hospital visit:
Rubber gloves.
Hand sanitizer
or alcohol swabs.
My electronic
translator.
The Chinese
word for “Penicillin,” (Qingmeisu), which I am allergic to.
Over the next
three days I recover beautifully.
China has
one of the fastest growing AIDS populations in the world. The practice
of reusing needles and other disposable medical materials in China is commonplace.
Although not the norm everywhere, forgoing gloves and washing IV and blood
collection needles in soapy (or not soapy) water and reusing them
is widespread enough to warrant extreme care. Since it is rarely possible
to provide your own needles, the solution is to demand only brand-new or
at least fresh-out-of-the-plastic needles and bring your own supplies.
The plastic does not guarantee that the material has never been used; it
means that the material has been sterilized in a medical stove. This is
just as sterile as a brand new needle.
My experience
with Chinese health care, while harrowing, is not necessarily the experience
every expatriate will have. A friend recently recommended a dentist
to me. Her experience was sterile and she was provided with her own set
of personal dental utensils for her next visit. She got the name of this
dentist from a Chinese friend who vouched for the dentist’s appeal to Westerners.
This is the ideal situation, and you can find it by making your needs clear.
While it
may be embarrassing to presume to tell nurses how to do their jobs, it
is your health that is at stake. If you feel that the care you are
about to receive does not meet an acceptable standard of cleanliness or
professionalism, you should feel no guilt in requesting a level that is
acceptable to you. It’s their country, but your body.
For more information
on health procedures for expatriates, as well as information on the progress
of health care in China, visit the World Health Organization’s country
profile for China at http://www.who.int/country/chn/en/.
For less uptight,
academic (yet still intelligent and funny) discourse on being an
expat in China, visit the author’s newsletter blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/i_rage_robbins/
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