Saving lives with languages

“What brings you here today?”, asked the doctor.

“Pain here. Very much pain. Yesterday pain more but today very bad.” replied the man in his mid 50s.

“What kind of pain it is?”, again asked the doctor.

“Very much pain. You know bad pain”, the man replied again, holding his lower back.

One could tell looking at the man’s expression and gesture how painful it is but for a doctor just knowing this much information is not enough to diagnose the problem and prescribe the medicine effectively.

If only there was a common language both the parties would understand, communication as well as treatment would have been much more easier and effective. In such situation, not only collecting the important information for doctors become difficult but also providing enough and accurate information get equally difficult for the patients too.

However this is just one scenario faced by the ethnic minorities here in Hong Kong, but there are several such (or worse) situations happening in the hospitals and clinics around here.

People of different age from ethnic minority groups are facing these problems, not only for their emergency health problems but also for chronic emergency ones, while booking appointments and also even during signing the consent prior to surgery or other medical procedures. And at times, it gets worse too regarding the medications and dosages as the directions advised are not well-understood.

Hong Kong is a home for thousands of ethnic minorities from long time, but language is still one of the most important barriers for them while dealing with the mainstream Chinese population. Although most of the time, lingua franca for them is English, the other official language of the city, situations such as in medical setting has also medical jargon and terminology, which cannot be easily understood. And after all understanding and expressing in effective way is of very high importance while seeking medical help as it is a matter of one’s life.

Thanks we have medical interpreters now available all round the clock when needed who provides not only the medical interpretation service on-site but also via telephone when needed.

Hong Kong Translingual Services is a social enterprise which provide medical interpretation services in about 16 languages; Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, Vietnamese to name few, including sign language interpretation for the deaf. Medical interpreters not only help to interpret the language from English to the native language of the patient, but also help in simplifying the medical terminology and jargons. Medical interpreters are trained and tested so that quality of service is delivered not only to interpret the language but also to save the lives.

However, there is a long way to go. Helping the doctors and healthcare professional to break the language barrier is a big start indeed but there are other steps to be taken now to save lives of ethnic minorities.

Different ethnic minorities have different cultural beliefs and as a result of that help-seeking behaviour differs from one community to another. For example, many Nepalese still believe in supernatural powers and traditional healers as well as consume herbal medications brought from their native place, whereas doctors here may not want to seek those information or listen such beliefs. Likewise, female patients from most of the ethnic minorities prefer female doctors for their convenience and comfort.

At present there are health information provided by the Department of Health in different ethnic minority languages , but whether it has been well understood and practiced by the community has yet to be discovered. Moreover information on different health services, such as preventive measures of different diseases, screening for cancers, schemes for vaccinations and other healthcare facilities, updates and other more should also be provided to the ethnic minorities of Hong Kong, not only linguistically but also from the cultural point of view.