50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 560 Medical Team to Africa

On September 19, Sun Zhiwei finally boarded a plane bound for Zaire.

After the plane took off, he looked down at the occasional plumes of smoke rising from the city below, feeling as if he were leaving a battlefield.

No wonder Parisians are calling this month "Black September".

The people of Paris are really unlucky, having encountered such a stubborn country as Persia and having an unreliable leader.

Now they've created unrest at home and are in a bind, unable to back down. This is the price they have to pay for interfering in other countries' affairs.

France is such a strange country; if the election selects the right leader, the country will be stable for a few years.

If the leaders elected in the general election are rather eccentric, then the people will have to endure several years of suffering.

Anyway, they chose these people themselves, so they have to swallow their bitterness and endure it, repeating this cycle endlessly, living a life like a roller coaster.

The flight took more than seven hours and finally arrived at the airport in Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, a country in central Africa, in the evening.

Kinshasa Airport has very basic facilities; the runway on the ground is clearly not made of cement.

If you really want to compare, even the facilities at his small airport on Anatahan Island are better than here.

Fortunately, the captain who piloted the plane seemed to be an experienced pilot, as he was still able to land the plane safely and skillfully on the airport's runway, which was almost a dirt road.

The plane bounced and landed like a sieve, and the passengers disembarked one after another, soon scattering like birds and beasts and disappearing into the streets outside.

Sun Zhiwei then noticed that there was no security check in the waiting area, only a ticket checkpoint, and you could board the plane as long as you bought a ticket.

So nobody here cared who Sun Zhiwei was until he left the airport and walked onto the street outside, when he truly understood what poverty was.

This is not just poverty caused by a large gap between the rich and the poor, but poverty affecting the entire country.

Looking out, all the way to the end of his line of sight, he couldn't see even a five- or six-story building.

Standing on a street full of black people, he realized that his specially made-up skin wasn't dark enough, and he stood out from the crowd of black people, looking very fair.

They've arrived in Zaire, but they don't know where to begin in order to find their target.

Just then, a man in a white coat walked out of an alleyway on the side of the street.

When pedestrians saw him in the white coat, they greeted him warmly, calling out, "Shinua, Nihou!" (Hello, Chinese!)
Sun Zhiwei was just wondering where to go when he heard these calls, so he immediately looked over.

That was a doctor, a doctor from China. He was easy to recognize; apart from skin color, Chinese people behave differently from people from other countries when they are abroad.

He thought for a moment and then remembered that our country had been sending medical teams to Africa since April 1963.

The first group consisted of 13 members of the Chinese medical team who were sent to aid Algeria, which officially marked the beginning of China's medical aid to Africa.

If you calculate the time, it has been exactly 20 years this year.

Over the past 20 years, we have sent dozens of medical teams to various African countries. Each team has worked for several years, not only providing medical services locally but also training local doctors.

Among our many international aid projects, medical aid to Africa is the most sustainable and has the best results.

The project was described by leaders as the best form of foreign aid that was "expensive, impactful, and yielded quick results."

The earliest medical aid teams sent to Zaire were likely dispatched around 73. This doctor should be from that team.

A doctor, regardless of their country of origin, will be respected here. This is because there is a severe shortage of doctors, and not just doctors, but all medical personnel and supplies.

This is the capital city of a country, which shows how poor the medical conditions are here.

Upon seeing the Chinese doctor, Sun Zhiwei had an idea in mind, and he immediately went up to greet him.

"Hello, are you a doctor from the Chinese medical aid team?"

The doctor was in his forties, with a thin face but long, strong fingers. He was surprised to see Sun Zhiwei's familiar face.

It's quite rare to see a Chinese person who isn't part of the medical team in Zaire.

"Yes, I'm a doctor from the medical team. My surname is Huang. And you are?"

"Nice to meet you. I am Sun Wei, a businessman from Hong Kong Island."

"Hello Mr. Sun, your Mandarin is excellent. How can I help you?"

"Dr. Huang, it's like this, this is my first time here, and I want to check out the business environment. But I'm unfamiliar with this place, so I'm just trying to get to know any Chinese people I meet."

"Dr. Huang, would it be convenient for me to visit your place?"

"this…"

Dr. Huang was just an ordinary doctor in the medical team, and he had no right to decide whether a Hong Kong businessman wanted to visit the medical team's accommodation.

Therefore, Dr. Huang decided to take Sun Zhiwei back to the medical team to consult with the team leader.

Sun Zhiwei knew that by this time, their medical team in Zaire already had three medical stations.

These are Mama Mobutu Hospital in Equateur Province, Mama Yem Hospital in Gemena, and Kintanburg Hospital in the capital Kinshasa.

They are now heading to Jindanbao Hospital.

Kinshasa Hospital is the most dilapidated hospital in Kinshasa. After our medical team arrived, we contracted out two treatment areas in the hospital and operated them independently.

It's not an exaggeration to say that it was essentially a complete rebuild of a new hospital from scratch, even though it was called a contract.

Because Jindanbao Hospital can only provide a venue and some basic furniture such as hospital beds; it can't offer any other support.

All personnel and equipment, including medicines and instruments, had to be prepared by ourselves. By "preparing by ourselves," we mean transporting them from thousands of miles away in China.

Our medical station even has to recruit its own nurses and caregivers, and we also pay their salaries.

Moreover, the patients here are all very poor, so it is simply impossible for them to maintain the normal operation of the hospital through fee-based operations.

Most of the time, we even have to give away medicine to those patients for free.

Because patients simply cannot afford medical treatment and medication, if the costs are too high, they would rather stay at home and wait to die.

A small fee will only be charged if hospitalization or surgery is required.

Anyone who becomes the head of the finance department here will probably hang themselves within three days.

Zaire is a country where even basic cold medicine needs to be imported. The medical station is only able to operate because it receives full funding and supplies from the domestic government.

(End of this chapter)