Earlier this year our batch of medical students had been to different hospitals in the periphery of the kingdom of Nepal for the college curriculum “District health and hospital management.” Immediately after the New Year we were in the Mission Hospital in the western part of the country, where we observed different departments and wards to understand the management of the hospital.
One day I was observing a male outpatient clinic, where an experienced Nepali doctor was examining the patients. After a name was called two people entered the room, one the patient and the other his educated relative. When it was clear that the patient could explain himself perfectly well, the doctor asked the relative to wait outside in the corridor.
A minute later, however, he reappeared with a fair skinned, Western foreigner who had just been walking down the corridor. To my surprise, he then asked this rather bemused foreigner to examine the patient, who was giving his history to the Nepali doctor. The doctor and the foreigner had a talk, and the foreigner explained to the relative in broken Nepali that he had explained everything to the doctor. The relative seemed satisfied with this and went outside again to let the doctor continue the consultation.
Later we found that the foreigner was not even medically qualified but was helping with the electronic instruments in the hospital.
Nepalese have great respect for foreigners (especially fair skinned ones), and the patients at the mission hospital tended to be dissatisfied if they were not examined by one of the foreign doctors working there, whatever qualification and experience they might have. The local people consider foreigners to be experts, and even the people from the border area of India come to the hospital to be examined by the foreign doctors despite having access to better hospitals. The thinking that foreigners can treat any disease is widely prevalent in the country, and affluent families in the cities prefer to go to Europe and the United States for medical treatment even though sophisticated and specialised local centres have been established.
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