She stoops over the consultation bed where I was lying at the SSRN hospital’s emergency department. Her white coat and the stethoscope hanging around her neck say that she is a doctor. She asks where I was feeling pain.

I say that I have a stabbing pain on my solar plexus.

“What is a solar plexus ? Show me where it is located ?”

Flabbergasted by her question, I ask myself if it is possible that a doctor knows nothing about the coeliac plexus, also known as the solar plexus. I say to myself that maybe she is just checking if I know what I am talking about when another young doctor enters the room.

She turns to him and asks if he has ever heard about the solar plexus and quizzes him about the location of this “thing” in the body.

This shocking incident sends me some years back when I was writing a feature article for l’express dimanche. Senior doctors responsible for the internship of newly qualified young doctors complained then that those who graduate in medicine in Eastern bloc countries and China do not have the required standard and medical knowledge to work as doctor. They alleged that some do not even know the difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

“We often ask ourselves if some of these young doctors have ever been to medical schools”, said one senior specialist.  Two doctors spoke openly about political interference, Mauritians going for medical studies with only a poor school certificate and fake medical university degree in the press article published in 2006 in l’express dimanche. http://www.lexpress.mu/node/166617

Neither the ministry, nor the Medical council deemed it fit to react to these statements in which a then member of the Medical council asked for the intervention of Prime minister to redress the situation.

Today, that is eight years later, some senior specialists say that the situation has worsen and would be catastrophic when batches of doctors who have studied in China join the ranks of the already highly incompetent young doctors.

“There are perhaps more than 300 Mauritians studying medicine in China or who are studying to become specialists. It does not cost them much money and effort, as it takes only three years to graduate in some super specialist fields, such as cardiology or neurology in China. In other countries, from India to South Africa, from Europe to the United states, you will need between five to six years to get qualified in cardiology or neurology”, says a senior specialist.

These specialists accuse ex-health minister, Ashok Jugnauth and Paul Bérenger, of having opened the flood gates to incompetent doctors by making of the Medical council a toothless bulldog.

 
While he was still health minister, Ashok Jugnauth pinned a certificate of incompetence to the public health services by having himself treated in a private clinic when he fell ill.

In fact, most of our political leaders go abroad for medical treatment. The laymen do not have these means and are left in the hands of poorly qualified doctors prone to medical errors.

Answering a Parliamentary question last year, Health minister Lormus Bundhoo said that his ministry registered 200 cases of medical errors in just 48 months. http://www.lexpress.mu/node/99851

Medical errors should not however be ascribed only to incompetency of the medical staff. Highly qualified as well as poorly qualified doctors are expected to deal with around 100 patients in three hours, from 9 to noon. They thus have around 2 minutes for each patient. It is difficult to avoid erroneous diagnostic under such circumstances.

One of our highly specialised doctors is very straightforward about the situation.

“Our hospitals have become dangerous places where you can easily get killed at the hands of doctors”.

Thinking about him, I painfully slipped off the consultation bed. I had found myself at the SSRN hospital due to a sudden burst of pain while driving home late in the evening.

No one paid much attention to me when I got off the bed and out of the hospital. The emergency room was overcrowded. I took my car and headed for a private clinic. I have a health insurance cover paid largely by my employer. Not many Mauritians have this chance.