Next time you need a doctor, go to China
Tessa Keswick marvels at the quality of care she received in Beijing when she found herself unable to walk. Painful though it was, the acupuncture was cheap and highly effective
On a recent visit to Henan Province in China I hurt my back and had the good fortune to come across the best doctor in the country. This is Doctor Wang Daifu. Being the top medical student in the most rigorously elitist and competitive system in the world is serious. Just as there are 20 million people studying the violin or engineering in China there are also tens of millions studying medicine — Eastern or Western, or both. Wang Daifu studied Western medicine in the People’s Liberation Army for seven years and Chinese traditional medicine for six. And he came out top of the class. Tall, angular, handsome and aged 42, he operates from his private surgery in the Chaoyang district of Beijing where he looks after anyone who can afford to pay. He also teaches two days a week. I asked him why he had chosen to specialise in Chinese medicine and he answered, laughing, ‘Because I want to be famous!’ In Beijing he is. It is known he spends time in Zhongnanhai (the high-walled estate of the Politburo) and is popular in the large embassy compounds.
Even Hillary Clinton would blanch at the thought of reforming the Chinese health system. Like so many things in China, investigation reveals a system that is still preternaturally tough. The vast majority of this enormous population has to pay for most healthcare, including operations and expensive drugs. The government does, though, consider health a priority and has poured money into the system over the last few years, doubling spending in the last five. Companies also now increasingly provide insurance for their workers and there are private insurance schemes. But the enormous task of raising standards for the hundreds of millions in the rural areas where healthcare is at its most basic is the government’s urgent goal.
In the cities healthcare is good, if you can afford it. In some areas of clinical research China is cutting-edge. While I was there a partially paralysed friend was receiving DNA treatment unavailable elsewhere. He sometimes found the nursing questionable. I am told there is no tradition of kindness to patients (except for the pampered ones like myself). But on the two occasions I went to the old American hospital the Chinese doctors were helpful and knowledgeable, and the facilities were clean and reasonably modern. There are no queues for treatment, apparently, since healthcare is still, for most people, terribly expensive. Chinese people prefer traditional medicine but will use Western medicine or a pragmatic mix of the two.
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Dr Henry Martin
March 14th, 2008 8:57amDear Sir Living in a peripheral society as I do we tend to think of ourselves as rather backward and unsophisticated compared to people living in, say, Britain. Therefore it comes as somewhat of a shock to read the absolute twaddle written by Tessa Keswick and published in your supposedly sophisticated magazine. Perhaps someone could explain the concept of referred pain to Ms Keswick. The fact that the pain she feels is in her leg does not mean that it originates there; the chances are that she has pressure on the nerve root in her spine. So sticking needles into that nerve is questionable, and would amount to malpractice if done by a Western doctor. And the idea of “cold air” trapped in nerves and under the skin is alarming, to say the least. The only medical condition I’m aware of that could do this is gas gangrene, a terminal phenomenon. As for keeping new mothers in bed: has she never heard of pulmonary embolism? When Chinese medicine can treat diabetes or meningitis or coronary artery occlusion we Western doctors will certainly sit up and take notice. Until then I’m reminded of the words of the great American philosopher, H Barnum: “there’s one born every minute”. Henry Martin South Africa
Max Kaye
March 16th, 2008 8:01pmI'm confused: If Tessa Keswick was cured by "the best doctor in the country", then why, upon her return to the UK, is she waiting to see some lousy western-medicine practicing specialist?
Jon Jermey
March 19th, 2008 9:31amIt's nice that Tessa Keswick has passed on a few hundred of her hard-earned pounds to the impoverished Chinese, even if it was to a rather well-to-do citizen of the People's Republic. But I have no doubt that she could have found equally effective treatment from many English chiropractors and osteopaths. Unfortunately 'alternative medicine' is a little like advertising as described by Lord Leverehulme: only ten percent of it works, but nobody knows which ten percent. Perhaps the 'crackling Chi' (arthritic knuckles?) alone was a sufficient placebo.
Hanif Kanji
April 18th, 2008 7:28amAre we talking about the same China I have spent 8 years in consulting on healthcare services in? Tessa Keswick's description of Chinese health services defies belief. Far from being no queues for service, the average Chinese person may have to queue for days in a hospital outpatient department to get a ticket to see a doctor. Services are generally quite appalling and most foreigners arrange medical evacuation when stricken anything serious.
Granted, there are pockets of excellence - far beyond what is available in the West.
Some specialties are further advanced than the West could dream of. Perhaps this has something to do with the lack of oversight on experimentation and lack of adequate peer review when publishing scientific studies (I am partially referring to ethics here).
Your headline advising people to seek care in China borders on the negligent. In fact people should have adequate evacuation insurance when travelling in that beautiful country.