Inject me up!

My girlfriend was sick today, a headache and dizziness were the major symptoms. As is usual in China, people when feeling sick go to the doctor to receive an injection. This injection is filled with antibiotics that the people believe will cure them of their ailment. More often than not, I am told, this works wonders and they usually feel better soon. Of course, any educated person knows what is precisely going on here, none other than the placebo effect. These people would have got better with time anyway and by giving them a treatment that they think works, leads them to get better quickly and then attribute it to the injection. Most people who present to the Chinese doctors are people with the common cold, which is of course a virus. When I tell them that antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infection and not viruses they seem to struggle to understand. Whilst the Chinese are mostly not religious people, this does not mean they are not superstitious and therefore this trend of getting injections for any and every complaint they have will continue. Of course this is problematic as in the future when they actually need an antibiotic for a bacterial infection it won’t work as the bacteria has grown a resistance to the unnecessary overuse of antibiotics.

Another issue is the common belief of the cold (temperature) causing the cold (the virus). This isn’t as bad a belief and it would be wrong for me to judge the Chinese on this, as most people in the world, even today, still believe in this myth. Even so, it should be said that no evidence has been found showing any link to cold weather to high incidences of cold simple due to it being cold. Something could be said that due to our behaviours of being closer to other individuals when it is cold, then therefore the spread of the cold is more likely. However this is very different from saying, ‘I ran all the way home in the freezing cold rain, now I have a cold because of it!’

A part of me wants to educated Chinese people about these things, but I do worry about whether the face-losing of others in this process will be too much to bear for them and they will simply ignore me. Thankfully, when the going gets tough and real diseases are in play, proper medical treatment is standard in the ‘good’ Chinese hospitals. Until then, got a scratch, got a sniffle, smelling not so good? Come and have an injection!

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