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What would we do in an emergency in China?

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Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images/Beijing Hospital

It was a question that we’d skirted around ever since moving to Shanghai.

What would the other do if either of us became seriously ill? Or, more likely, was run over by a noiseless electric scooter with no lights on late at night.

Neither of us wanted to admit that we’d be useless. That our first response would be to send a message to our friends via WeChat [the Chinese version of WhatsApp], before hailing a taxi to the nearest hospital, while praying the Chinese medical profession would come to our rescue.

It was a terrible plan considering that in China local health care professionals speak almost no English, and different hospitals offer different specialisms.

You might accidentally end up somewhere with one ER doctor, while the hospital down the road could happily handle the entire district of Xuhui coming down with Norovirus.

We were also preparing ourselves to have the least chance of success when communicating when doctors and nurses.

Even if you’ve been diligently studying your Chinese characters, it’s likely your medical vocabulary will falter in the a moment of trauma – particularly if you’re trying to Google ‘ER Shanghai’ at the same time.

Your brain needs to be on autopilot mode; like when you order steamed buns in the morning after no sleep.

You might assume from this post, that we’d never needed any health care in Shanghai before. Quite the opposite. Like many other lucky expats with health insurance, I regularly head to private, international clinics.

But in a out-of-hours emergency, you can’t rely on this option.

At night, private clinics will keep on the minimum number of staff and no specialists. So expats need to research the intricacies of the local health system in order to stand the best chance of survival.

Up until two months ago, we’d chosen to avoid this rather unpleasant task.

But now we had a precious baby to look after, and we didn’t still know the number to call for an ambulance.

Luckily, another set of parents had also noticed the flaw in their armour, and organised a crash course in local health care and emergency first-aid.

All we had to do was pay, show up and join in.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been out of the house much in the past few weeks (since having our first baby), and managed to underestimate how long it takes to get to places.

Happy to be out together on a Saturday, we stopped for a coffee, did a bit of window shopping and arrived at the venue on time, before remembering that in China an address is often just the start of your journey.

Finally we found the 13th floor of the anonymous tower block, saw the A4 paper sign, and discovered the room full of other nervous-looking couples, who’d managed not to be almost half an hour late.

And I’ll share what we learned, next week….

Follow Sarah O’Meara on Twitter/Instagram @sarahomeara


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