By Denis Elamu
Chinese female doctors are increasingly earning public trust for their commitment and dedication to offer treatment to their South Sudanese patients.
Liu Fang, a 38-year-old dermatologist with the eighth batch of the Chinese medical team in Juba is always seen busy in her office at the Juba Teaching Hospital with patients seeking treatment for various skin diseases.
The patients who turn up to meet include both children and adults with skin diseases such as eczema, scabies, dermatitis, drug eruption and tinea (ringworm).
Liu from Anhui Province is also an expert in Chinese traditional medicine which gives her wide knowledge on how to treat several types of skin diseases in her patients.
The number of patients who visit her on daily basis demonstrates the trust and strong relationship she has built with the public in Juba, since arriving in the youngest nation in August last year.
“My patients listen to my medical prescription and some of the patients who live far away are unable to come to me regularly for more medical examination. This is the main reason, why I prescribe for them enough medicine so that they continue with treatment from home,” Liu told The Juba Echo in Juba on Friday.
Liu on daily basis treats between 70-80 patients. She however, said that at first the going was not easy due to language barrier as most of her patients speak to her in the local Juba Arabic.
“My challenge is the language but this is solved by our South Sudanese medical assistants who help us to translate into local Arabic for the patients. South Sudanese are very patient and very cooperative which helps my work,” said Liu.
“Most of the medicines I need to prescribe for the patients is available so the patients often get what they need. The treatment is free of charge,” she added.
Liu, however, noted that on some rare occasion they run out of medicines due to high number of patients who turn up for treatment.
She was part of the Chinese medical team that in December last year, treated more than 2,000 locals in Lado area of Terekeka in Central Equatoria state.
Joseph Kenyi, a medical assistant who works with Liu in their crowded office hailed the Chinese medical team for their generosity.
“I have been working with the Chinese medical teams for the last six years here. They are helping people with free treatment for skin diseases and their other teams are helping in treating other diseases. They are giving free treatment to people of South Sudan who are suffering,” said Kenyi. “We deal with many patients with tinea versicolor, tinea pedis, tinea corporis, tinea capitis that affects the nails. We are here helping people with free treatment,” added Kenyi.
Meanwhile, Sun Yangchun, a 38- year-old gynecologist from Anhui medical University, said that for the few months she has spent in the main referral hospital she noticed that the high number of women suffering with cervical cancer is largely due to lack of health awareness.
“I think health awareness is still low in South Sudan, a lot women come here with terminal cancer and this is due to lack of health awareness. Some of these women do not turn up for timely checkup that’s why some of these small problems turn into terminal cancer,” said Sun who has worked for over 20 years as gynecologist.
She operates the only colposcopy machine in the hospital donated by the Chinese government to help detect cancer and other diseases among women.
Sun disclosed that 30 percent of the inpatients in the gynecology ward suffer with cervical cancer, adding that a quarter of these suffer with terminal cancer which is extremely difficult to treat.
“From what I know cervical cancer is prevalent among South Sudanese women because of early child marriages and also due to vaginal inflammation and this is worsened by failure to seek medical examination,” said Sun.
“What we can do is to use the colposcopy machine and do surgery but for terminal cancer there is no way we can treat,” she added.
