Passenger seems to be asking me to explain why I think that the Belgian health care system is becoming a joke.
A few weeks ago a tourist lady standing in front of me asked for my assistance, turned white then her body went in shock and fell unconscious in my arms. I won't go into details as to why she went in shock as it would point fingers to certain doctors, but let's simply say that it's a failure of the Belgian medical community.
I called an ambulance and monitored her pulse and breathing while talking to her.
The ambulance arrived as she regained full conscioussness and awareness, but they wouldn't take her with them because she didn't have money nor a credit card on her. One of the ambulance guys was really hesitant to leave her there given her condition, but in the end commercial pressure prevailed and they left here there after asking me to monitor her and call again if it happened again.
I think that even in most places in Africa this doesn't exist anymore.
Oh and did I mention, our family doctor almost left my father to die early this year.
It took miracles to make an appointment with him within 3 days, then he would dismiss him with some pain killers and codeine, week after week for 3 weeks.
I asked why he wouldn't get antibiotics, the doctor said that it wasn't necessary.
Fortunately, even though I don't have any medical diploma, I can recognise when a person takes a turn for the worse better than that idiot doctor who has known and seen him his whole life.
The next day, I took him to the hospital ER, where at first they weren't taking it seriously. In the ER we were interviewed by 3 different interns independently, which was tiring and silly, but no doctor in sight for at least an hour. The ER looked relatively quiet. I felt I had to exagerate the explanation of symptoms to keep him there, because I knew he was going to get much worse.
After many "He doesn't look too bad", and many questions that raised questions as to their competence and interest... I convinced them to keep him one night for monitoring and left.
2 hours after I left, suddenly his fever spiked up to almost 40 and he started puking the ER full, while undergoing huge muscle spasms, pain and other symptoms simultaneously. Then and only then, "they started panicking and starting IV's, while they start asking all the right questions... " my father remembers.
During his 1+ month stay at that hospital, the nurses forced him into exercise despite extreme pain and weren't friendly at all. That's when I was there myself, so I can't imagine what he had to endure when I wasn't there.
When he pushed the assistance button, they wouldn't come immediately, often not at all. He didn't push it that often that it was annoying, only when he needed it.
As we couldn't take them seriously anymore, we tried it as a joke when I was visiting and indeed, no one came.
The food was mediocre, perhaps unacceptable. 2 loafs of bread, some ham, some cheese, some butter and very dark black coffee, which I couldn't understand. That was lunch and dinner, no breakfast.
The bottles of water were always left where he could't reach for them and even drinking from a bottle was a challenge, so I had to procure one of those sports drinking cups myself.
I had to bring him extra food to avoid underfeeding that could worsen his condition.
I suggested him to change hospitals, but as he too knows how things are, he said that the result would be the same, if not worse as they would start from scratch with painful tests. He was probably right.
His illness was not diagnosed after over 1 month despite a team of 7 doctors in different fields, and his condition improved through basic antibiotics that our family physician should have provided us from day one.
He decided that he would finish his care at home, regardless of the doctor's recommendation to wait a few more weeks, and after a week at home where I attended for him, he was all cured.
This was at a major hospital with a good reputation in one of Belgium's major cities .
A few weeks ago, I came in contact with a subject who after an entire conversation said "oh by the way my child here has chicken pox and silly doctor is telling me to keep her home if not inconvenient". I distantiated myself immediately and went to decontaminate myself.
Obviously her doctor didn't explain properly how chicken pox works.
I felt the contact was too close, did some research and waited off on my incubation period, and tada, I got shingles as a secundary infection.
I Isolated myself, then went to the doctor after warning him that I could be contagious... the doctor inspected me without gloves and didn't seem to care about contagion.
That's when the doctor pulled out a "it's just a rash, I think that you ate something that you're allergic to".
I had to use assertiveness there to get the right medicine, otherwise I would have gotten allergy medicine and would have been denied boarding a flight if symptoms flared up.
So excuse me if I have lost faith in the health care system.
If they can't handle simple cases, they can't handle Ebola. It's that simple.
And the clever patient asked in the mean time to get a prescription for a flue shot