CHINA / National

Sailing doctors deliver 'Health Diplomacy'
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-06-22 10:54

SUN

Before she traveled to Conakry in Guinea to work as a first-aid nurse, Ding Ying pictured Africa as a place of scorching sun, malaria and poverty.

"But in fact it was no wasteland," said Ding, 44. "Basic medical equipment was available. Most local people were conscious of disease prevention."

During her two years at the emergency center, Ding even grew watermelons and cucumbers with seeds she had brought from China.

She attributes her relaxed working conditions to others' hard work, quoting the old Chinese saying "qian ren zai shu, hou ren cheng liang": one generation plants trees under whose shade another generation rests.

A steady trickle of medical teams have been coming to the continent since 1963, when the newly independent Algeria asked for international aid to relieve the former colony's scant medical service.

Helping African nations build railroads and hospitals has long been a part of China's diplomatic policy towards Africa. Evolving in the late 1950s and early 1960s, China-Africa relations have been cemented through pragmatic economic and political means.

Late Premier Zhou Enlai ordered China's first team to Algeria, thus launching more than 40 years of medical cooperation during which nearly 20,000 medical workers have traveled to 47 African countries and regions, treating more than 200 million patients, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health.

Forty-five Chinese medical workers have lost their lives helping African health, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

Even during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China offered a helping hand from the principle of internationalism, says Cheng Yuanmeng, 65, a Swahili translator for the fifth medical team to aid Zanzibar, Tanzania during the 1970s.

The wiry old man still smiles as he recalls the 13-day journey by dhow across the Indian Ocean bringing penicillin, vitamin and foodstuffs to people in Zanzibar.

The 400,000 people of Zanzibar had one hospital, he said. While Indian doctors earned 4,000 shillings a month, Chinese doctors accepted their 200 shillings from the government in the spirit of friendship.

"The medical team project has been a key part of China's comprehensive diplomacy," says Professor He Wenping of the Institute of West-Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"The non-utilitarian motive, humanitarian solicitude and the continuity of aid cemented China-African relations and made the two support each other in international affairs."

Prof. He asserts that unlike western nations, China honored African nations' sovereignty, delivering aid with no strings attached.
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