If doctors are soldiers, we should be their support troops

Medical staff on the front lines deserve our full support and especially at times of disease outbreaks, writes Rym Ghazal.

Every morning, before heading to work, Dr G kisses her baby son and says a little prayer that her day at a hospital in Jeddah goes smoothly and does not bring any new incidents of the Mers coronavirus.

Working with cancer patients, this Saudi doctor considers it her duty to carry on saving lives, despite the high risks to her own health and that of her family. A doctor and several nurses at the hospital where she works have contracted Mers from patients.

“We are like soldiers at a battlefield. We can’t abandon our posts at such a critical time,” she told me over the phone. She wears gloves and a surgical mask. Some staff at other hospitals in Saudi Arabia have resigned as cases of the virus have increased. The kingdom’s health ministry reported on Sunday that there have been 102 deaths attributable to Mers since the outbreak began in 2012.

When I said to her that she is a hero for continuing to work, she dismissed it and said: “The real heroes are the patients who suffer each day as they battle their own illnesses.”

Nevertheless, it is important to see it from the perspective of the doctors, who make hard decisions everyday about the patients in their care and do so despite the risk of infection. Every decision at any hospital in Saudi Arabia is analysed and reanalysed right now, with people diligently working away behind the scenes to find a solution and understand the latest health challenge.

A team of World Health Organisation scientists are in Saudi Arabia at the moment to help the authorities better understand the virus, which some studies have linked to camels.

Every few years there is a flu epidemic or fears of an epidemic, but many of them are more scare stories than real threats.

I will never forgot how when I was at school in Saudi, my teachers banned us from eating anything related to cows from Britain, including chocolates, when Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” was a big issue in the UK. Scientists established BSE was spread by cattle being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal. As an animal lover, I was heart broken when more than 4.4 million cattle were slaughtered as part of the eradication scheme.

When I asked my teacher – I think I was about seven years old – why not give the cows medicine and vaccinate them against BSE, she replied: “They are just animals. If sick, we get rid of them, why waste time on curing them? We replace them with healthy ones.”

And that statement was enough to change me forever, and turned me into a lifelong animal activist.

As previous incidents have shown, people overreact and panic whenever it comes to diseases. They often become paranoid.

During the era of Avian flu, friends with farms started killing any chicken with “weird” symptoms, like one that walked with a slight limp had to go, just in case it was infected with the Avian flu.

Now those with camels are watching their animals with great suspicion. If one is careful and follows the local health authority guidelines, one should be all right. Abu Dhabi Health Authority’s recent campaign warned the public not to consume unpasteurised dairy or uncooked animal products. One should keep one’s hands clean and wash them with a disinfectant, and one should also close one’s mouth when sneezing. I personally find it disrespectful when people sneeze without using a tissue, as they know they are spreading their germs to others.

In the same way that doctors and medical staff are helping the afflicted and taking all necessary precautions, so the general public should too. Spreading rumours and half-truths via text message doesn’t help anyone. Rather it just aggravates a sensitive issue.

Work by the medical profession to combat the Mers coronavirus is hard enough without false information being spread by the public.

The valiant work of health care professionals like my friend Dr G, who consider it their duty to continue despite all fears, should not be taken for granted. We should all work together to ensure safety for all.

Twitter:@arabianmau