| The infamous hospital |
Africans, or European doctors who know a little about Africa, frown when they mention "public hospitals." Humiliating, deadly, infuriating... African hospitals, especially public hospitals in Africa, can be said to be infamous. People in the newspaper, in cafes or from the personal experience of relatives and friends, more or less hear about the bad deeds of the African medical system such as "premature death of newborns", "unnecessary amputation", "temporary detention of patients to make family members pay", "serious illness caused by lack of effective diagnostic equipment or misjudgment of analysis results".
Many disgruntled patients also use tags such as "Spit on your hospital" on social networking sites to vent their grievances. Africans who can afford medical care travel to the Maghreb, Europe or the United States in Northwest Africa for treatment. But for the vast majority of local people, if they can't afford medical expenses, they have to resign themselves to fate. Reports show that negative factors such as insufficient funding in public health, poor maintenance of infrastructure and equipment, underpaid health care workers, low morale in the industry, and shortages of medicines have all had a serious impact on Africa's health care system.
| Transform |
However, through interviews with local doctors and patients, we also found that the situation is gradually changing, and can even be described as "changing with each passing day". Today, health care systems are evolving in many parts of Africa; The emergence of new medical technologies is also providing solutions to once insurmountable difficulties; In some specific areas of medical care, the level of care in Africa is even comparable to that of large hospitals in Western countries.
In 2016, the Niamey Future Demonstration Hospital, which was built by Chinese enterprises in Niger, was officially opened.
Edmund Bertrand, a French professor who has been practicing medicine on the African continent for 30 years and is now the honorary dean of the Abidjan Medical School, lamented: "This is Africa now. Nor does it seem to be as bad as people say. Today, basic medical equipment and standing medicines are in abundant supply. ”
The number of hospitals in many countries in Africa is also increasing dramatically. As part of the national plan to improve health care, Morocco plans to build 40 brand new medical institutions; There are 4 hospitals under construction in Senegal; Côte d'Ivoire has allocated 3 billion West African francs to renovate emergency medical service facilities; In Conakry, guinea's capital, the National Hospital of Doncar, built in 1959, was modernized by middle eastern funding; In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the "50th Anniversary Hospital Renovation of Sandsa" project is under the responsibility of a Chinese company, and when completed, it will be operated and managed by an Indian medical institution.
When referring to "Chinese hospitals," some doctors working in Africa say the infrastructure they aided does not yet fully meet local needs. Professor Alain Delos, founder of Chain of Hope, an NGO that manages several African heart medical centres, said: "Over the past decade, more than 70 hospitals have been built Chinese, they have standard materials and suitable equipment, but they lack a professional background in medical care, and the language barrier also brings some problems, but this does not affect our cooperation. Together, we will build the Ouagadougou Medical Centre. They have the money, and we have the expertise. ”
| Each has its own strengths |
Equipment quality and medical technology are also changing rapidly. Hospitals in Abidjan have become industry benchmarks in Africa for kidney transplants, while hospitals in Dakar have excelled in the field of heart disease. Serigné Abdubal, a French doctor working in Africa, said: "When my friend Professor Jean Dauber came to my coronary angiography room from France, he said to me: 'I'm so jealous of you, I don't have this device in Rennes!'" ’”
In Rwanda, a drone developed by startup Zipline can deliver blood bags to remote hospitals.
Technological innovation has also brought impressive changes. Yvonne Mburu, an expert in oncology and immunology in Kenya, joined the African Presidential Council, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, and wrote a report on health in Africa. She mentioned in the report that a large number of projects are beginning to emerge, such as automated dispensers in South Africa, drones delivering blood to Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana, telemedicine suitcases in Senegal, the Centre of Excellence for MDR-TB in Ethiopia, the Epidemiological Biosafety Emergency Response Room in Guinea and the Centre of Excellence in Oncology in Butaro, Rwanda. "I had trained in the United States and France and wanted to go back to Kenya and put what I had learned into practice, but there was no position that suited me at the time, so I founded Nexakili with the goal of connecting africans with specialized skills living in the diaspora so that they could interact with each other and contribute to the development of the African health system." Mblu said.
Today, international cooperation is under way at all levels of health care in Africa. For example, Rwanda's telemedicine cooperation with U.S. hospitals, cross-border medical services jointly developed by Senegal, the Gambia and two "Guineas" (Guinea, Guinea-Bissau), and so on.
In Mali, Bintu Dembele, Executive Director of the Arcad SIDA Association, said: "The Cesac Centre, which specializes in the treatment of AIDS in Bamako, has been benefiting from the help of the specialists of the Pittisabeus Hospital in Paris for the past year. Together, we built the Nadis software system, which digitizes patient files. This is crucial for people living with AIDS and helps to avoid the serious consequences of treatment disruptions. ”
Students of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Dakar
| Brain drain and lack of | of experts
Of course, high-end digital devices can only play their best role in the hands of trained medical personnel. While healthcare in Africa is facing a brain drain and a shortage of experts, the prospects are bright. According to Jafar Haeckel, a Moroccan epidemiologist, "health professionals in the Maghreb have been able to do work in some areas of expertise, such as diagnosis, care, monitoring and prescribing, but there are still gaps in management. ”
Professor DeLosz praised his Senegalese colleagues: "They are erudite and very good. "The University of Dakar has been at the top of the list in the field of medicine in the past two years, and many African medical students have come here to observe and study. In 2019, the university, in partnership with the professional colleges of Bamako and Kokodi, launched a new type of e-health voucher that will help improve the level of telemedicine services in Africa. In the future, the basic training of doctors, nurses and other professional technicians will be based on a broader international network. Staff at the Dakar como Cardiorespiratory Pediatric Centre are trained in France, Belgium and Switzerland, while other department staff are furthering their expertise in Europe, the United States or Cuba. At the same time, Dakar has attracted students from all over the world for decades, a phenomenon known as "health diplomacy".
Cuba's medical training system provides highly specialized education and can attract up to 15,000 doctors from all over the world every year, including about 2,500 African doctors. As Dr. Luis Garcia, President of the Medical University of Havana, put it: "Cuban professionals have a special ability to refurbish and bring back to life medical equipment that is no longer applicable but not obsolete, which is of great interest to many African countries." ”
While Africa's health care system is some way from perfect, it is not as bad as some media reports. However, it is not known whether this will be enough to reassure the local wealthy that they will trust their compatriots and no longer have to spend astronomical sums of money to seek treatment overseas. Sheikh Diop, head of the Vaanne University Medical Centre in Dakar, said: "This is also a challenge that we must take up. ”
[Compiled from the French "Young Africa"]
Editor: Hou Yin