Andy Roscoe’s Blog: A short break on the Pearl River delta….

Andy Roscoe’s Blog: A short break on the Pearl River delta….

Hi again with more news from Guangzhou. A week has gone by and we have been on a short break on the Pearl River delta which connects the city to the sea and Hong Kong. This is the agricultural heartlands of the Cantonese speaking people and from where most Chinese have emigrated over the centuries. We are currently travelling through mile after mile of vegetable and fish farms – bit like the south of Spain but without the plastic sheeting!

Reflecting on the first week in the hospital, the main impression is of ralentless demand for medical help. This is mainly due to the population explosion in the city from 3 million in 1980’s to 12 million now. In this context there simply isn’t time to do individual consultations notwithstanding that it is fairly normal to have treatments in shared space in most of China.

The top professors here are seeing on average 70 people a day, 5 days per week. And they are working 9-5pm with a 2 hour lunch break which are not long days by UK standards.

We have seen a huge amount of stroke patients as well as lots of neck pain types. These seem the main specialisations here. It is very rare for an acupuncturist to be the first port of call for a stroke patient in UK. Here they treat these people immediately and then later refer to the western stroke dept in the same hospital.

The advantage of this is that they encourage blood and energy to keep flowing through the affected area (without getting into technical jargon here), whereas the first response in western medicine is to sedate the patient and close down the movement of blood.

As always it is fascinating to see the two systems of medicine side by side. There is no attempt by the acupuncture doctors here to claim superiority.

Finally on a slightly humorous note we also observe the adroitness of the doctors putting needles in with one hand , on the phone with the other, directing photographs every few minutes, and all the time there is a patient below with a serious problem who sometimes is also on their phone!

All for now, more to come soon. I attach a few photos of life in outpatients including one of me having a walking Tuina treatment, and one with Prof Qin, aka the Flying Needle Doctor.
Andy