Before she traveled to Conakry in Guinea to work as a first-aid nurse, Ding Ying pictured Africa as a place of scorching sun, malaria and poverty. Most local people were conscious of disease prevention.
She attributes her relaxed working conditions to others' hard work, quoting the old Chinese saying "qian ren zai shu, hou ren cheng liang": one generation plants trees under whose shade another generation rests. A steady trickle of medical teams have been coming to the continent since , when the newly independent Algeria asked for international aid to relieve the former colony's scant medical service.
Helping African nations build railroads and hospitals has long been a part of China's diplomatic policy towards Africa. Evolving in the late s and early s, China-Africa relations have been cemented through pragmatic economic and political means.
Late Premier Zhou Enlai ordered China's first team to Algeria, thus launching more than 40 years of medical cooperation during which nearly 20, medical workers have traveled to 47 African countries and regions, treating more than million patients, according to the Chinese Ministry of Health. Forty-five Chinese medical workers have lost their lives helping African health, according to Ministry of Health statistics. Even during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution , China offered a helping hand from the principle of internationalism, says Cheng Yuanmeng, 65, a Swahili translator for the fifth medical team to aid Zanzibar, Tanzania during the s.
The wiry old man still smiles as he recalls the day journey by dhow across the Indian Ocean bringing penicillin, vitamin and foodstuffs to people in Zanzibar. The , people of Zanzibar had one hospital, he said. While Indian doctors earned 4, shillings a month, Chinese doctors accepted their shillings from the government in the spirit of friendship. He asserts that unlike western nations, China honored African nations' sovereignty, delivering aid with no strings attached.
