To help, doctors must first learn to speak

A challenging task faces medical team to Guinea

These are the hands that give people hearing, sight and save lives, but now they must rest; it is time for ears, eyes and tongues to do the work.

As part of a Chinese government medical aid program for Africa, a team from Beijing Tongren Hospital, widely regarded as the country's top clinic for eye and ear problems, will soon head to Guinea, in West Africa.

But before they can undertake that mission they need to know how to communicate with their patients and others, which means learning French - a daunting task considering that their elementary course has been squeezed into six months and they have had to do it part time even as they continue their normal work.

Before beginning to grapple with the language of Moliere, none of the doctors, all aged about 40, had so much as opened a French textbook before. But it is the written word that is the least of their problems.

"Speaking and listening are the biggest challenge for them," says Valerie Galeazzi, the team's teacher at Beijing Language and Culture University.

"But they are very passionate and always like to practice speaking after the classes."

Tongren Hospital has taken part in 26 government-organized medical aid teams sent to Africa since 1963. In fact that was the first year that any Chinese medical team had gone to Africa, the first one to Algeria, another country with strong French links. A total of 42 doctors from Tongren have provided free assistance over more than 50 years.

The team heading to the China-Guinea Friendship Hospital in Conakry, capital of Guinea, in January is 19 strong, consisting of 18 doctors and an accountant who will be part of a hospital management team.

This will be the first time that a non-medical professional has been part of one of China's medical aid teams to Africa. A senior management staff member of the hospital will be the team leader.

"This is a new form of long-term collaboration that everybody on both sides is looking forward to," says Wang Yu, vice-president of Tongren Hospital.

"The most important thing for us is to pass on ideas to our African friends on hospital management. Ideally, after we leave they will be able to do all this independently."

Wang says the nature of China's medical aid in Africa is changing from providing technical assistance and supplies to working with counterparts on the continent to deliver long-term, sustainable development.

During their 18 months in Guinea, Wang and his team will also help the China-Guinea Friendship Hospital build an intensive care unit.

"To run an ICU, several well-trained doctors and nurses are needed. Our doctors will be deployed to work on day-to-day surgery and care and help improve the hospital's services."

Of course, the team's preparation for Guinea does not begin and end with French lessons. Those on such teams need to be versatile individuals, and members are being given primers on gardening, writing and photography.

"We're going to be living in Africa for a year and a half, and we have been encouraged to live as the locals do," Wang says.

That includes growing vegetables "and recording all our memories there".

Since 1963 China has sent more than 24,300 medical personnel to Africa and helped treat about 270 million patients, the National Health and Family Planning Commission says. Some have been deprived of the privilege of returning home to recount their stories: 51 doctors and nurses have died during their postings.

Last month Chinese and African health officials adopted the Cape Town Declaration, which set out the aims for collaboration between China and Africa in health matters over the next three years.

Apart from continuing to provide scholarships and training courses to public health professionals in Africa, China is committed to establishing 100 health facilities, including hospitals and clinics, in developing countries, according to the declaration's implementation framework.

The hospital at which Wang's medical team will be based was built with Chinese government sponsorship. Before it opened in April 2012, Chinese medical teams sent to Conakry worked at Ignace Deen Hospital.

"That is one of the city's biggest public hospitals and has nearly 700 beds," says Wang Fei, a surgeon in Tongren Hospital's orthopedic department who led an earlier team of 13 surgeons that was stationed in Conakry for two years.

"But in 2000 the postoperative infection rate was as high as 80 percent. Surgeons in the hospital performed operations without changing surgical shoes and gowns."

He cites a research paper by the hospital in 2000 that said 1 in 100 patients who underwent surgery in the hospital was infected by HIV/AIDS because of poor sterilization of surgical instruments.

"Long-term training of local medical staff translates into long-term improvements in health in African countries," Wang says.

"Some doctors in Africa have received medical training in Europe, but performance quality assurance requires an efficient and strict system and good management."

Chinese surgeons have performed cataract operations on more than 2,000 patients in six African countries since 2013, and have built ophthalmology partnership centers in four countries. China has also trained more than 2,100 surgeons, nurses and management professionals in Africa over the past two years.

Under the Cape Town Declaration, China will send short-term medical teams composed of clinical specialties to 40 African countries to provide specific medical services and training, such as free cataract surgery for locals.

As part of achieving long-term aims, pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies from both China and Africa are being encouraged to play a role in these aid programs.

One such company is KPC Pharmaceuticals, whose credentials were brought to worldwide attention in October when Tu Youyou, a Chinese medical scientist and pharmaceutical chemist, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria.

Since 2000, global mortality rates among malaria patients have fallen by almost half, the World Health Organization says. In Africa the rate has fallen 54 percent for adults and 58 percent for children.

KPC's artemisinin products account for half of China's annual overseas medicine aid budget for treating malaria. Sales of Artemether, one of its best-selling artemisinin products, were worth 200 million yuan ($31.3 million) last year, and 85 percent of those sales were in Africa.

Yuan Pingdong, KPC's chairman of the board, says: "Over the next few years our work with our African partners will continue to be driven by the principles of the company's social responsibility rather than simply being based on making money."

KPC now plans to build a drug factory in Ethiopia and is now looking for a site, he says.

About 85 percent of the drugs used in Ethiopia are imported, he says, and he estimates that the new factory would produce drugs bringing in revenue of $200 million a year, equivalent to nearly a quarter of the country's drug sales last year.

The factory would create many jobs for locals, he says, in a country where unemployment is high.

Beijing Holley-Cotec Pharmaceuticals is closely involved with KPC's African plans. It is one of the world's biggest producers of raw materials used in anti-malaria drugs. It has more than 6,000 hectares of land on which is grown Artemisia annua, and it produces 100 tons of Artemether and artemisinin products a year.

Since 2004 the company has established branches and subsidiaries in 32 African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria. Last year KPC took over the management of Beijing Holley-Cotec's business in Africa and now 85 percent of its employees in Africa are locals.

Since 2006, Beijing Holley-Cotec has provided malaria treatment and prevention knowledge to nearly 400 officials and medical staff for China's medical aid programs in Africa. It has also provided scholarships worth 500,000 yuan in Kenya and Tanzania in the past five years to support needy students in medical school.

yangwanli@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/27/2015 page8)