CoughFest 2012, and Thoughts on Foreign Medical Systems

Whether it be the milder climate, the lack of a daily public transit commute or the less dense population, we have been remarkably lucky in not catching many cold viruses since moving to Dubai. I had some sniffles in 2011 and, another time, got off the flight from South Africa with a raging sore throat that quickly evolved into a shortlived headcold. But never anything with a wallop.

Until last week.

I had returned to work the week of New Year's Day, and found the office to be at around 50-60% capacity. Most people were still on their holidays. (This differs from work in the US, where people are back in full force after the new year because no one wants to immediately start depleting their reserves of the new year's vacation days.) And then, in the 2nd workweek of the month, the office was back at full capacity. Except that a lot of the people just returning from holidays were coughing. Without covering their mouths. Which meant I ended the week with chills and sniffles, and spent the next week working from home thanks to a severe cough.

I called it CoughFest2012, or The Hackathon. Bleary eyes, terrible sleeps, coughing jags that just kept going and going once started.

Finally, on day 4 of my Work From Home mode, after sitting in the living room and listening to the sunrise call to prayer because I couldn't sleep, I went to the clinic to see if I could get a prescription for Robitussin DM. Ah that magical DM, which always knocks both me and the cough out for the night so that I can at least get rest, sweet drug-induced rest.

Turns out DM isn't available in the UAE, so instead the doctor equipped me with an assortment of 3 different medications, and they seemed to do the trick.

Now 99% recovered, I thought it would be neat to jot some interesting observations about the medical system here:

1. Healthcare is really quite excellent. You can walk into the clinic and be seen within an hour. They present this option as if it's a huge burden, "we have no openings in the next hour," but they clearly haven't sat in an American medical office for hours and hours and hours, so this is a perfectly acceptable wait.
2. The clinics all seem to be brand-spanking new, with polished surfaces, Norwegian wood and interior decorating everywhere. Many have neat pictograms to show the directions to different specialty departments.
3. The clinics tend to be filled with a mix of locals in national dress and Western expats. The parking lots are always packed. It's mostly at doctors' offices that I have seen families of locals, surrounding grandmas who wear their traditional burqa (which is not like the Afghani burkah, but instead looks like a gold masquerade accessory - click here to see).
4. Technically, you don't have to get a prescription to get meds from the pharmacy, you can just buy it as a walk-up customer for the list price. Good deal for cheaper items.
5. Medical insurance pays for all pharmacy purchases if you present a prescription. There is no exchange of cash, no copays. You pay the equivalent of about $15 to see the doctor and then get the pharmacy stuff for free. Doesn't matter how pricey the medicine is, it's free - - even items that were costing me about $150 per month copay in the US, no charge here.
6. As mentioned, I couldn't find Robitussin DM anywhere. A little Googling seemed to indicate that it's banned here because of hallucenogenic properties (poppy seeds, also banned). In a way, this isn't a new situation because the Tylenol 3's with codeine that we could take in Canada were similarly banned in the US, but I wondered how people deal without this cough syrup. Based on my experience, it's all about the nasal sprays.
7. Reporting a daily exercise regime to a doctor will blow his mind around here, they have been seriously impressed. (Makes me wonder how much of the reputation for sedentary-junk-food-consumption is true in the city.)
8. Marital status is always a topic of conversation for lady patients (or at least it has been a topic of discussion for me every time)
9. As they go through the usual battery of questions about medical history, when doctors get to the "smoking?" question, they then add the clarifying follow-up, "not even shisha?"
10. A few unusual tics: my insurance card through my work expires at the end of January. So when I went to get a prescription refilled, they would only give me enough to cover to the end of the month. Whereas in the US, we would get the new card well ahead of the previous one's expiry, here I'll maybe get my new card in the first week of Feb.
11. And, again insurance-related, I once got a text message that gave me a week's notice that they were revoking coverage of the place that I usually visited, leaving me to scramble to find a new doctor. It all worked out, but it felt like one more annoyance.

When we were talking about moving abroad, I told James that good medical was a "must have" for me, and I can report now, after a year or so here, that Dubai has been totally excellent.

Comments

[mom]

Now, that is music to my ears!!! Good to hear that Dubai has been totally excellent medical care wise.

[Jennifer]

Yes indeed!