13th March 2001
Imparo Italiano nel supermercato. Indeed, if I had a mind to I could learn Spanish as well. I am nervous about doing that, however, since a neighbour told me that two of the Spanish check-out boys fought mano-a-mano in amongst the returned baskets one Saturday afternoon. They are so frisky I think I will stick with Gabriella from La Bella Sardegna and improve my Italian. This year Tuscany should be even more fun with me speaking in tongues and my husband, who speaks good Italian, wincing with embarrassment.
It is not just in the supermarket that a good grasp of modern languages is useful nowadays, it is much the same in the Outpatients. One's French can be improved by forcing Romanians, who often have a knowledge, to help with the niceties of grammar. They may be there for medical advice but good communication is a two-way process. They can also help improve favourite phrases. One of mine, "Qu'est que vous avez commene glace/pate/pain?" - ("what have you got in the way of ice cream/pate/bread?") could be adapted to go "rash /discharge/etc", n'est pas?
Multiculturalism has set in so much now in Ireland one has to be on the ball for sickle cell disease, tuberculosis (is Luke Clancy's day about to come?) and all sorts of parasites. From dealing with the diseases of degeneration we see infectious diseases we thought were gone. And isn't it good to be reminded that they are not, and how small the world is?
In this column I have frequently expressed my sympathy for those involved in vaccinating the population - whether you do vaccinate or don't you are wrong. I bet some of our new patients wish they had even a choice. I do hope we manage to ensure that all workers from outside the country who come here, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, realise any offers of health care are meant to be for their benefit and not to try to exclude them.
Amongst our refugees at present are many doctors and nurses including doctors from Iraq. On a recent television programme I heard a surgeon from Iraq who was applying for asylum in Australia say he and other doctors in the army were being forced to amputate the limbs of deserters! Surely being asked to act in such an unethical way is reason to grant asylum? In view of the fact that Saddam Hussein executed his two sons-in-law after they briefly absconded to Jordan I do not see how we can send anyone back there and feel they will be safe.
I said this recently in a Seanad debate on Iraq. Pious words about removal of the U.N. sanctions which are certainly causing deaths of children and totally innocent civilians are one thing but helping the few Iraqis who have reached our shores would be a really practical expression of concern.
Some years ago Iraqi doctors were very welcome here, particularly as post graduates. Anyone who has read the Beef Tribunal report can see how keen we were to sell beef to their fellow countryman. Those doctors and nurses who are here might become very useful members of the medical community.
Fear of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been accepted by the U.N. as a reason for granting asylum, too. Recently I chaired meetings on this practice in Cork and Dublin. These were organised by Comhlámh and the Dublin one was particularly well attended by midwives. Dr. Valerie Donnelly of Holles Street, who has put great work into dealing with FGM, spoke but the words of a Nigerian midwife who had suffered FGM herself as an adolescent, were those which made a great impression on the audience.
I will spare you the grim details except to say that it required one man sitting on her chest and several other adults holding her legs apart to restrain her while she was hacked at with some blunt instrument. As an adult and midwife she spoke out against FGM in Nigeria and was threatened for her pains and lost her job. Those who do not know the dreadful medical complications which follow FGM, death from bleeding being one, seem to feel that anyone from outside the regions where it is practiced who express a concern about it are guilty of "cultural imperialism", whatever that is. But suppose the tradition was to hack off the four fingers of a little child's right hand or the genitalia of a little boy, would we say that was alright?
It was reported on a recent radio show by someone from the Well Woman Clinic that an official from the Department of Health had been asked by a junior Minister to find out on foot of a constituent's enquiry where female "circumcision" was carried out in Ireland. I thought it was a joke, but others say, no, it was a serious request. Who on earth was the junior minister? Does he, for I cannot believe it was a she, know that a black French girl who was subjected to FGM as a child in France recently sued the French Government for failing to protect her? As her lawyers argued, would it have been considered acceptable if it had happened to a white child?
Senator Mary Henry, MD
