let me explain to you our recent event in the medical field in morocco (the message is long please read it when you are free ❤
In Morocco today, thousands of medical students stood together in all our faculties to speak up against a decaying health system.
I think that by meeting medical students from all over the world, I've come to realise that what we go through during our studies might not be the norm.
No, it's not normal to start an internship without having studied the pathology beforehand. (I started an internship in cardiology before ever studying its pathology)
No, it's not normal to be a medical student with no health insurance in a high risk environnement (TB is still a public health problem in Morocco).
No, it's not normal to have to do free nightshifts, without a locker to put your clothes.
No, it's not normal that we study 8 years to end up with the same salary as someone who studied 5.
No, it's not normal that when a patient is dying because of a lack of equipements, it's up to an intern to collect money from students to go look for a pharmacy and buy it.
No it's not normal that our monthly students' "salary " is 110 dh (Roughly 11 euros) and that's only in the case where we do get it. I'm still waiting for the ones from my fourth year.
I again can only speak for myself, but I do believe that we have a system that keeps on producing overworked, depressed doctors that will have to face a ever growing demand from pissed-off patients.
And the solution is not to send a doctor to a village where even Paracetamol or Ibuprofen is a miracle to find, let alone having a decent blood sample or a radio scan.
We are not doing anybody a favor by giving our people the illusion of a national health coverage.
The only way to achieve any real progress is by providing an infrastructure that will protect every moroccan's right to good healtcare.
By making sure that no child has to die from diarrhea or a commun cold because a pill wasn't available at the hospital.
By making sure that that tumor is correctly diagnosed by the appropriate means before it's too late.
By prividing doctors with the basic needs to have that surgery in a sterile appropriate environement.