Ask any Mauritian what his hopes and dreams are for 2017. The odds are high that the answer will be to get away from here. If there is such a thing as a Mauritian dream, it’s emigration. And sure, the people who take one-way trips to the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport often have valid reasons for leaving. The rupee is weak. Last names and party allegiance seem to matter more here than qualifications. But it’s important to remember that Paradise Europe doesn’t always have the greenest grass. Some of it is dry and yellowed.

Here is a story straight out of Paradise Europe about something as vital as public healthcare. A mother of three told a regional politician that she couldn’t accept her apology about the long waiting time to access health care. The reason? Because it would leave her kids motherless. “I die while you apologise; that’s the problem,” the woman, who was called Lina Baldenas, said. Doctors had just discovered a rapidly-growing tumour inside her. Unless that tumour was surgically removed quickly, Lina would not make it.  She needed that surgery yesterday. Yet, the earliest appointment she could get was… three months down the line. It’s not easy to accept an apology from a politician when you know that her government’s flawed healthcare system will literally cause your death. Lina died shortly after confronting the politician on live television.

This story from Paradise Europe happened in Sweden, supposedly the continent’s greatest welfare state. And it is not an isolated incident. The severely ill are not the only ones to suffer. While Mauritians can see a doctor the same day, Swedes have to wait up to two weeks to see their family doctors according to the Euro Health Consumer Index (2015). The situation in two other countries with notoriously catastrophic waiting time, the UK and Ireland, is not much better. Swedes would die of envy (unless the cancer got to them first) if they discovered that Mauritians can speak to their doctors on the phone. Swedish doctors are elusive creatures that can only be reached during the rare appointments that you have to fight with secretaries for weeks or months before getting. As flawed as the Mauritian healthcare system is, the accessibility of it beats that of one of the world’s supposedly most socially advanced countries.

Just because the grass is greener here in terms of accessibility, however, doesn’t mean that the whole lawn is spotless. Mauritian public hospitals are still an insult to hygiene. Public sector doctors don’t have enough time to spend on each patient. As for private healthcare, it’s a money-making machine, with patients constantly having to wonder whether they need another MRI or if the clinic is just trying to cash in on them. We have one million issues when it comes to the healthcare system alone. But to assume that Paradise Europe doesn’t have any – or that they are less serious than ours – would be sickeningly wrong.

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