Voice 1
Thank you for joining us for today’s Spotlight program. I’m Joshua Leo.
Voice 2
And I’m Rebekah Schipper. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
Voice 3
“Health workers are saving lives every day all over the world, whether they boil a container of water, lovingly wash a newborn baby, ride a bicycle ten miles to give a valuable drug vaccine, or educate twenty women in a far away village.”
Voice 1
Doctor John Agwunobi said this. He works at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He was speaking at the World Health Day conference for 2006.
Voice 2
Health workers are very important. After this conference, the World Health Organization, the WHO, began a new project. This project would honour health workers. The WHO wanted people around the world to know about all the different and necessary things health workers around the world do.
Voice 1
For this project, the ‘Health Worker Diaries,’ the WHO invited health workers from around the world to write to them. They wanted to hear about a single day in the life of a health worker. Loh Chin Siew was one health worker who wrote back. Loh works at the Drug and Poison Information Centre at Singapore General Hospital.
Voice 2
Loh describes a normal day at her job.
Voice 4
“I spend a large part of each day on the telephone, both with doctors and with worried people calling our twenty-four-hour hotline.”
Voice 1
The Drug and Poison Information Centre is a resource for people who have questions about medical drugs. Any person can call to get information about a drug or poison - even doctors. And they can call at any time. The Centre is open twenty four [24] hours a day, and seven [7] days a week.
Voice 4
“A doctor calls from the Accident and Emergency Department of a hospital. An unconscious man has just been brought in by ambulance. He looks like he is sleeping. But he will not wake up. His friend told the doctor the man drank liquid from a bottle about an hour ago. The man lost consciousness shortly after that. The patient’s mouth is wet. The black parts of his eyes have become very small. And his leg muscles are moving uncontrollably.”
“These physical signs, or symptoms, suggest poisoning by a chemical - organophosphate insecticide. I advise the doctor to ... give the patient the drugs atropine and pralidoxime. They are cures for this kind of poisoning. I know that with this treatment, the man has an excellent chance for full recovery.”
Voice 2
There are thousands of different drugs. And each one affects the body differently. Too much, or the wrong kind of a particular drug can be harmful to a person’s body. Two drugs can react to each other badly. But who knows how each drug reacts to another? Well, that is Loh’s job.
Voice 4
“Another doctor from the hospital calls. He asks if there will be any drug interaction between two medicines. The patient has been taking one medicine for some time. But the doctor wants to give her another medicine for one week. There could be a small problem. So I advise him to ... observe the medicine levels during treatment.”
Voice 1
Often, Loh gets calls about the amount of a drug a person has taken. Drugs affect people differently depending on how old a person is and how much they weigh. Loh must often calculate if a medicine will be effective or even dangerous. Using a person’s age, weight, and other things, she uses mathematics to see if the drug will be harmful.
Voice 4
“A young doctor calls and asks if he should start the medicine N-acetylcysteine in his patient. The patient is a twenty-one year old woman weighing fifty kilograms. She took thirty tablets of the drug paracetamol two hours ago. I confirm that ... that is too many tablets for a woman of that size and age to take. It could be deadly. So I tell the doctor ... yes, you should begin the treatment.”
“A young mother of a two year old boy...calls in a state of extreme worry. She has accidentally given him two times the suggested amount of antihistamine. I start by telling her ... stay calm, all will be well. At the same time, I calculate the correct amount of antihistamine for each kilogram. Very quickly I tell her... your baby will be fine. But he may experience some tiredness.”
Voice 2
Sometimes Loh gets calls that do not have to do with drugs at all. But she can still help.
Voice 4
“Another mother calls to ask if she needs to bring her one year old child to hospital... She caught him eating small round silica beads. I tell her... you do not need to worry unless your son is choking and cannot breathe. The beads are not chemically harmful. They will pass through his body naturally.”
Voice 1
At the centre, Loh does much more than just answer the telephone.
Voice 4
“We do not just talk on the phone at the centre. It is also a place of learning. We have no official training in managing poisons at the National University of Singapore. That is where I studied. So we must learn while we work. I finished school with a degree in Pharmacy in 2003. Then I completed a nine month internship at Singapore General Hospital. After that, I immediately started on-the-job training at the Drug and Poison Information Centre. It was set up the same year. I continue to learn, but now I am also a teacher.”
“If there are students working with us, I spend time discussing methods of treatment and drug information skills with them. Sometimes I make presentations on new drugs to the students or to the hospital’s other pharmacists.”
Voice 2
Loh is very proud of what she does. She has worked hard to succeed at her job. And she knows that she is helping many people. She always finds out if her advice was helpful.
Voice 4
“I always follow up on my cases to make sure our advice has had a good result.”
Voice 1
The health of our world depends on health workers like Loh. In the beginning of this program you heard a saying from Doctor John Agwunobi. He described all the different kinds of things that health workers do. Some health workers are educated, like Loh. And some are not. But all are important for preserving and improving world health.
Voice 2
Many of Loh’s words were adapted into Specialized English to make them easier to understand. The information in this program came from the WHO’s website.
|