Medical Care

Having had to take Jason to the doctor this past week, I thought I'd tell you about Singapore's medical care, as we have experienced it.  Of course this is somewhat limited, but it will give you an idea of at least some of the medical care here.

Doctors' clinics can be found in many, many places.  If we walk outside our building and cross the parking lot, we are already at one clinic.  There is another a little farther down the street.  These are both what we would call "family doctors."  Within a mile is the Bishan Baby and Child Clinic.  These places each have one doctor and one or two people at the front desk.  No appointment is necessary; you walk in and take a "queue number," and when your turn comes up, the doctor sees you.  The pharmacy is also right on site, so if you are the only patient at the time, you can be in and out with all your medicines within 10-15 minutes.

The clinic closest to our place

The family doctors here prescribe a lot of medicines.  For a fever and cough, we take home at least four prescriptions.  There are a few reasons for this.  One is that the pharmacy being in the doctor's office means that the doctor makes extra money for the prescriptions he sells.  Another is that people are anxious to get back to work or school, so they will take anything available to them to help them get rid of the sickness as quickly as possible.  We don't like to give our kids so many meds though, so thankfully Dr. Decker in Michigan has been willing to answer a couple of emails I sent him, asking which medicines our kids really needed among all the bottles on our counter!  We still refer back to those emails when we go to the doctor here.

These are the meds we had in our house at one time earlier this year--

one for Eric, two or three for Jason, and all the rest for Megan!  

We probably didn't use half of them.

For all that, we have only had a couple of expensive prescriptions given to us.  Much more typical is what we experienced the other day:  my husband took Jason to the doctor and came back with four medicines, having paid $35 for the consultation fee and all the meds combined!  You can't beat that! :-)

The hospitals here are known for being very good.  You can see from the following picture that they have some world-class doctors in Singapore.  This was part of a sign inside a hospital lobby.  (NHCS, KKH, and SGH are all different hospitals here.)

The heart/liver transplant done in 2009 was for Pastor Lau.

Our family has had to use the hospitals here a couple of times for testing and minor problems.  (For example, in our two-year-old's terms, explaining why he went to the hospital once:  "Bead in nose 'n doctor 'n bead out!")  I have stayed home with the rest of the family while my husband has driven the sick kids to the hospital, but he said the hospitals feel very much like those in the U.S.  Megan was hospitalized overnight once for observation and testing when she had a terrible rash all over her body.  The term "hospitalized" is not used here so much though--they would say Megan was "warded."  That is because most hospitals do not have private rooms, but patient wards.  Megan's condition required her to be in isolation, so she did have her own room.

Megan in the hospital in January

In the similarities and in the sometimes difficult differences in doctors' approaches here, we are reminded that doctors are only means in the hand of God, and that our health is always in His control.