Focus

Chinese medical teams kindle hearts in Guinea

By Hu Yongqi and Cui Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-22 08:12

A Chinese doctor writes prescription for patients in Guinea. Photo Provided by Li Yun

BEIJING - From 2006 to 2008, Li Yun, head doctor at Beijing's Xuanwu Hospital, led a team of 15 healthcare professionals to improve the health of Guinea's residents.

Li's team treated about 31,000 patients in 19,777 outpatient operations and 1,555 surgeries during the two years.

They also trained 178 local medics to set up more advanced mechanisms in healthcare management.

All these were part of China's increasing efforts to help less developed countries as it pursued the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs are eight internationally agreed targets that aim to reduce poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation by 2015.

"The quality of healthcare in Guinea is far from adequate, so we have to help the Guineans," Li said.

In 2008, the life expectancy of Guineans was 54 years old, 15 years less than the world average, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The mortality rate for children aged under 5 reached 14.6 percent that year, which was 9.1 percentage points higher than the world average. Sixteen out of 1,000 Guineans are also subject to HIV, twice the world average of 0.8 percent, WHO figures showed.

Li's team was the 20th medical team sent by Beijing's health authorities to the West African country since 1968. A team usually consisted of 15 or 16 doctors and nurses. On Aug 25, 2010, the 22nd team of 16 medics from Tiantan Hospital also began their duties in Conakry, Guinea's capital.

"It is our mission to perfect the enduring friendship between China and Guinea," Li, 49, told China Daily.

"We had to complete our tasks, despite the various difficulties we faced."

The youngest medic from Xuanwu Hospital was 24 years old and the oldest one 53. Some of the team members had to leave their aged parents or young children behind. Liu Donghui, a doctor of the hospital's rehabilitation department, left his eight-month-old son for the mission.

More than 11 doctors and nurses treated patients in Conakry and another four medics had to stay in Labe, another healthcare aid site 450 km away from the capital. Although Conakry has better facilities than other areas of Guinea, medics said it still looks like Beijing in the 1970s. Electricity and water supply would be cut off for more than 16 hours a day, even if a surgery was being carried out at the hospital. Sometimes, medics would have to stop to find a flashlight and resume the surgery afterwards.

Drinking water at the site was also light yellow and clothes would turn that color after being washed, members recalled. They had to use purifiers to treat the water.

Vegetables were also scarce during meals. The healthcare workers could sometimes buy potatoes or onions and they had to get used to eating more beef and mutton.

The most common disease in the area was malaria, because the hot but humid weather was suitable for mosquito breeding. Malaria and diarrhea caused 24 percent of the deaths of children aged under five during 2008 in Guinea, WHO figures showed. All healthcare workers were always subject to mosquito bites. In October 2007, several doctors fell sick after being bitten by mosquitoes. They could not recover in two months because the hard work there reduced their immunity to the disease.

The members also said they were more busy in Guinea than at home. They were on duty during the weekends to attend to any locals who needed help. At times, Li and his colleagues had to disrupt their meals and sleep to attend to patients immediately.

"No one complained and they did their jobs well," stated an award that was presented to the team in 2008 by the Ministry of Health.

On Jan 10, 2007, a nationwide strike also hit Guinea. One month later, the government prohibited all gatherings and protests. A large number of police officers and soldiers marched into the capital.

The unrest led to shootouts and the Chinese healthcare workers were close enough to hear the gunshots. Li Yun still has a picture of a window in the team's clinic that was shattered by bullets.

The team also taught local doctors to establish more efficient hospital management practices and helped them to receive training in China. Chinese medics taught local doctors how to use the only electrocardiographic machine in Labe. With the help of Li Yun, 15 Guinean doctors learnt more about malaria, HIV/AIDS, parasitic diseases, traditional Chinese medicine and nursing techniques in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu.

Li said the healthcare condition of underdeveloped areas in China is far from perfect. But the Chinese government has continued to send doctors to aid African countries such as Guinea. "It shows our responsibility as a nation whose economy is rising."

China is intensifying its efforts to push forward the country's international aid. Since 1950, China has provided aid to more than 160 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific, through nearly 2,000 aid projects in fields such as agriculture, construction, transportation, healthcare and education, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

While it grapples with its own poverty and other difficulties in modernizing, China has also actively promoted cooperation in global development to achieve win-win results with its partners.

"The deadline of the MDGs is only five years away and we are facing huge challenges at this critical moment," Health Minister Chen Zhu said earlier this month.

"The international community should have a sense of mission and urgency to reach consensus, coordinate actions and accelerate progress," Chen said.

The minister also called on relatively more developed countries to increase their assistance to less developed countries so that they can improve their health system and be more capable of dealing with health challenges, such as AIDS prevention.

He emphasized that the MDG health indicators of women and children worldwide have been improving slowly, but the situation is far from optimistic.

"The ultimate goal of social and economic development is a better life and brighter future for the people, no matter where they are from. And health is the basis of a good life," he said.

Apart from providing medical aid to poor countries, China has also established effective and pragmatic agricultural cooperative mechanisms with many developing countries. It aims to promote information-sharing, research cooperation and technology exchanges in the agricultural fields, said Lu Xiaoping, the deputy chief of the international cooperation department at the Ministry of Agriculture.

So far, China has sent nearly 1,000 agricultural experts and technicians to more than 20 countries. China sent about 300 agricultural teachers to Ethiopia alone in seven years, benefiting more than 30,000 local teachers.

"China signed cooperative documents or memoranda on agriculture with more than 30 developing countries, which established cooperative mechanisms in the field," he said.

Under the framework of the mechanisms, China promoted cooperation with the governments of many developing countries on both policy and technology exchanges. They also coordinated with one another in international agricultural negotiations and enacted international rules on agriculture.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/22/2010 page6)