Busy life in Tunisia

Located not far from the Sahara Desert, the Sidi Bouzid Regional Hospital serves the surrounding communities over an area of more than 100 square km. While receiving up to 500 pregnant women for delivery every month, the obstetrics department where Guo worked only had three doctors and over 60 nurses. Among the three doctors, two were Chinese.

“Women in Tunisia usually have four to five children, but the country lacks obstetricians,” Guo said.

It makes things worse that there is only one operating room for the obstetrics department. It happens sometimes that one woman was inside to deliver her baby, while a few more mothers-to-be were waiting outside for emergency treatment, according to Guo.

“To increase efficiency, I proposed to do obstetric operations in other available surgery rooms, so that more operations could be done, saving valuable time for women waiting for urgent delivery,” she said.

Her proposal has saved patients’ valuable treatment time, yet leaving doctors no time to rest. “We were racing against time every day, and sometimes I would perform up to six or seven operations per day,” said Guo, recalling her busy life in Tunisia.

While in Sidi Bouzid, Guo always remained on call whenever she was not on duty. “Tunisian pregnant women came to the hospital on an ox or horsecart, bumping all the way along the rough road. Some even walked barefoot for several hours to see the doctor. How could I refuse them?” she told Chinafrica.

In July of 2015, Guo noticed a lump in her left breast, which grew larger by October, but she didn’t pay much attention. “There were so many patients and I was too busy to worry about my own problem,” she said.

Even so, as an experienced obstetrician, Guo had a feeling something was wrong. “But I thought it was still in an early stage, and I just wanted to stay