In each country, residents will find a couple of unkind words about local medicine: in America — expensive, in the UK — bureaucratic … In Russia, it seems, everyone has long been his own doctor. We love reading medical journals, diagnosing ourselves and loved ones, and prescribing medications for each other – fortunately, almost everything, except for potent sleeping pills, can be bought without a prescription.
In the Netherlands, medicine is considered one of the best in the EU. No, not in terms of the number of beds and man-hours per patient — these figures are just not too high here, but the population almost does not get sick. Infant mortality tends to zero, old women of eighty cross their native expanses on bicycles, and children stomp to school in the rain and do not even sneeze.
If you come to the doctor with a complaint, his first reaction is to suspect you are a hypochondriac and send you home. “Let’s watch,” the doctor says politely. “If the symptoms persist after a month, we will conduct an examination.” After that, you may be reluctantly referred to a specialist and treated, but very conservatively. For example, bronchitis — rinsing and warming up, you can’t ask doctors for antibiotics: “Here you treated tuberculosis in Russia, but you got a multidrug-resistant form, which all of Europe is afraid of like fire.” This, by the way, is true. We really “hardened” Koch’s wand for so long with various drugs that we managed to breed a form of tuberculosis that is resistant to any antibiotics.
That is why all immigrants from Eastern Europe in Holland are first of all forced to do a fluorography. It is not customary here, as in the United States, to stuff restless children with psychostimulants (in Americans, excessive activity is considered a mental illness), and elderly citizens with cholesterol-lowering drugs and antidepressants (because old age is not a joy). You can’t self-medicate here, as in Russia: nothing but elementary pills “from the head” and “from the stomach” is not sold without a prescription.
You have to drag yourself to the doctor and prove that you really need to swallow pills in handfuls. Not everyone succeeds. For example, local doctors convinced me to give up almost all the pills that I used to take in Russia. And nothing, alive and even feel much better.
We will surely feel better if we refuse the pills that, succumbing to advertising, we prescribed ourselves.
There is World No Tobacco Day. Americans celebrate November 24 as Buy nothing day. Maybe it’s time to announce the All-Russian Day of the fight against pills? What if we try to give up all those miraculous pills that we have prescribed for ourselves, succumbing to intrusive advertising and advice from relatives? Of course, we will not immediately become as healthy as the Dutch, but we will certainly feel better.