IMAGINE GOING TO the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) and being attended to by a Chinese doctor.
Then, as you are wheeled onto the ward, some of the nurses there are Chinese too. They smile warmly with you and ask about your welfare in their charming, but often indecipherable English.
A dream you say? Not really.
According to Ambassador Wang Ke, a group of Chinese doctors and nurses will soon begin to work at the QEH. Her exact words on September 27 at the reception celebrating the 67th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China were: “I hope that the first group of Chinese doctors and nurses will work at Queen Elizabeth Hospital very soon so as to offer medical services to local patients.”
When Cou Cou saw that, we wondered how this could happen just so, since no one from Government ever mentioned this. What’s more, given how the then opposition, the Democratic Labour Party, some years ago pilloried Government for bringing nurses from the Philippines and Nigeria to work in the QEH, we would have expected them to say something. Of course, Cou Cou welcomes any assistance for the QEH, as long as Barbadians benefit.
We hope, too, that this time around the propaganda put out by DLP operatives to sour the move by the Bees back then would not be revisited to similarly scare the public, like unfounded accusations that the nurses were unqualified and could not understand English. When, in fact, most of them were more qualified and had greater experience than local nurses, as they were part of an eligible pool awaiting recruitment for hospitals in the United States and Britain.
What Cou Cou is concerned about, though, is whether the doctors coming will have their qualifications reviewed by the Barbados Medical Council as required to show proof that they can be registered here to practise. And if these doctors’ respective universities are not registered with the council, will they have to sit the Caribbean Association of Medical Councils (CAMC) examinations?
These exams, part one and part two, are administered to trained medical practitioners who wish to practise here and within CARICOM. These are the same exams Government has insisted that Barbadian doctors trained in Cuba must do before they are allowed to practise here.
The other issue is whether these doctors will be practising modern medicine as we are accustomed to or traditional Chinese medicine, or a combination of both?
And of course there is the communication problem. The language of business in the Philippines and Nigeria is still English as they are former colonies of the US and UK, respectively. As nurses there are recruited to work in the US and UK, those who don’t speak English fluently strive to learn it.
On the other hand, for the Chinese, learning English is only now becoming a priority, so their understanding and speaking of it is often not the best.
So though Cou Cou welcomes this Chinese initiative for the QEH and other things planned – the building of five jet bridges and control tower at the airport, the redevelopment of Sam Lord’s Castle, rehabilitation work on the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex, and the development of a Performing Arts Convention Centre on the Needham’s Peninsula – we think Government needs to be forthright in disclosing the details of each venture.
The only question Cou Cou has about these initiatives is what’s in it for China? After all, as people throughout Africa and Asia can attest, that country is known for doing something for something.
