Bloody Qtips and Chinese Hospitcal Hygeine
Posted by w_thames_the_d on March 31, 2012
The other day I had to go to a Chinese hospital/gulag camp. While there, I had to give a blood sample, which I figured could not be too problematic a thing to do.
Upon arriving at the designated location, however, I spied those little blood speckled qtips on the floor at my feet….
yeah, here I am sitting at a blood letting table in a Chinese hospital and the guy taking samples is not wearing gloves, he’s grabbing at my arm and I am sitting amidst a floor full of potentially hazardous waste.
I jerked my hand back from the guy and told him it was ok, I could prick my own finger and he could test the blood. He did so, then did not cleanse the wound nor his hands and I walked off, thankful to be alive.
As for the qtips, some may worry about things like AIDS, but that virus does not live long outside the body. The more pressing concern would be things like hepatitis and the like. But this is China where lives are a dime a dozen, so who really worries about things like hospital hygeine?
China, thousands of years old and still not civilized.
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Brewskie said
Tom over at Seeing Red in China works in a Chinese hospital; he has some interesting stories to share.
The not wearing gloves bit… that’s actually interesting. I’m bringing this up not because the guy should have been wearing gloves, but many are surprised to learn that 30 years ago in American health care settings, gloves were used sparingly as well – with the exception of things like surgery. Even in nursing homes, when an elderly resident defecated and had to be cleaned up, it was not surprising if an aide or, even an RN, did not wear gloves to clean, and wipe the resident (they obviously washed their hands afterward).
Glove mandation started in the late ’80s, arguably as a result of HIV/AIDS. The ironic part is infections have actually increased since then; this is the result of numerous factors, such as the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but also because gloves provide false sense of security: staff don’t wash their hands as frequently, or because they wear gloves, staff are less apt to think of surfaces they’re touching after previously touching contaminated surfaces.