Well, there hasn't been much training this week - it was rather rudely interrupted by an encounter with very dodgy chlorine on Tuesday night which put me out of commission with a chest infection of sorts.
How am I going to link that to a cause? Well, that's easy.
See, here in the UK, if I actually got round to it I could go to my GP / the out of hours GP / A&E and get some medicine if I really felt I needed it. Or, being a doctor myself (ha!) I could self-diagnose. Or, since I was stupid enough to go into work despite barely being able to breathe, I could get the opinion of about 6 different doctors ("go home with antibiotics and/or an inhaler") - and that's just the ones on my team. Whatever complaints anyone may have to make about waiting times - we're well off here: we have free healthcare at the point of need, we have modern technology that doctors / nurses / patients in many countries can't even dream of (anyone ever heard me rant about Burma?) - and it's all pretty easy to access.
That said, I'm not even going to highlight overseas needs with this post. Why should I when Medecins du Monde, a charity more usually associated with healthcare in war zones and humanitarian disasters, has discovered a worrying - and unmet - need for healthcare among various groups right here on my doorstep in London? Project London provides acute health care to vulnerable groups such as migrants (illegal or in limbo in the asylum system), rough sleepers and sex workers before helping them to register with a GP and access mainstream services. In the two years since it opened, nearly 1,000 patients have been seen, many of whom had been in the UK for at least 3 years before trying to see a doctor. Antenatal services were a common need, as was help with anxiety, back pain, dental problems - all the things that crop up commonly at a GP or dental surgery and which should be easily available to anyone in the UK.
If you want to learn more about their work, in the UK or elsewhere, Medecins du Monde are at http://www.medecinsdumonde.org.uk/
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