"We have much to gain from closer bilateral relations with China"
Dr Paul O'Brien (back row, right) as part of the Ireland team that won the Medical Football World Cup in Vienna, beating Brazil, Spain, Hungary and UK in the final, with Kevin Moran's nephew scoring the winner.
During Covid, when Ireland needed help, China answered. No politics or posturing, writes , who was living in China at the time and offering invaluable advice and insights on the pandemic
My entry into the world of medicine has been anything but straightforward. I took the long route, a path full of twists and turns with all roads leading back to China.
I’m in my second year as a junior doctor, facing into basic specialist training beginning this July. It’s daunting. I’ve jumped through a lot of hoops to get where I am. Six years in medical school, US medical license exams, Irish medical licence registration exams, membership exams and multiple rounds of interviews, and that’s just the start.
It has been a long road but its been full of great experiences; top of the list was winning the Football Medical World Cup in Vienna, beating the UK in the final and overcoming the likes of Brazil, Spain, The US and Hungary along the way.
As a junior doctor I face relentless pressure. The transition from my life of remote work and traveling the world, to my role as a junior doctor beginning specialist pathway training has been, to say the least, tough. Often in the moments of clarity found post adrenaline dump, after arrest calls, acute infusion reactions, amidst the cacophony of monitors and the constant background buzz of busy hospital wards, I find myself asking that most existential of all questions, “how did I get here ?”.
It’s the same question I found myself asking early March 2020 in a meeting room in the Bon Secours Cork with Tánaiste Michael Martin, and a veritable who’s who of luminaries from the Irish medical world, all connected via live feed to Chinese frontline doctors in Wuhan battling the world’s first waves of Covid.
I began studying medicine back in 2013 in the beautiful city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, in the medical faculty of one of China’s most prestigious Universities, Zhejiang University, and rotating through some of the worlds most advanced and well-funded hospitals.
Even without the rose-coloured lens of retrospection, my decision to study in China easily goes down as the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s an absolute wonderful country and people and my decade-long and ongoing experience there continues to be overwhelmingly positive. I’ve a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter to show for it, a career, and a lifetime of good memories.
Despite being 28 at the time, having two degrees, and a prospering career outside of medicine, my decision to study medicine wasn’t too much of a surprise. I’d be brainwashed my whole life. I’m the product of an old-school Irish Catholic upbringing, where the hierarchy of life went: ‘God, priests, doctors’, with the sweet nectar of matriarchal approval divvied out accordingly. I never had a chance.
Before I began medicine, I had already been living and working in China as a regulatory analyst/consultant focused on China FMCG, chemical and environmental sectors, with a special focus on the food industry including dairy products, infant formula, health foods and foods for special medical purposes. I carved out a niche for myself as a global expert helping international stakeholders contextualize the impact of new China government policies on market access requirements and market dynamics in China.
Commentary from my key thesis relating to China’s use of technical barriers to trade to restructure its dairy sector and alter market dynamics in the infant formula sector was featured in Bloomberg Business, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Food Navigator and closer to home in the Farmers Journal. I gave keynote speeches to Irish Ambassadors in Shanghai, advised key decision-makers in Bord Bia on China strategy, and consulted for some of Ireland’s top dairy companies. Another life...
When Covid hit China, c.January 2020, I had a 10-year head start on commentators here in Ireland. I knew China. I had friends and colleagues in Wuhan, and I had a network of doctors, ex-classmates or colleagues in Chinese hospitals giving me first-hand info on events as they unfolded.
I also had an established content pipeline via my LinkedIn where I had 350,000 followers. When I started with my LinkedIn commentary on Covid in early January 2020 on the unfolding Covid debacle, I certainly didn’t see it turning into appearances on RTÉ Prime Time specials, Today with Daithi and Maura, Today with Sean o Rourke, newspaper headlines etc. Things snowballed.
From all this I was put in touch with then friend and now colleague at the Bon Secours, Cork, Dr Oisin O Connell. Together we were able to bridge my China medical network with his extensive Irish and global medical network. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Dr O’Connell was one of Ireland’s most influential players and unsung heroes of the Covid era, mobilizing an army of doctors, politicians, engineers, and everything in between to combat covid here in Ireland.
He’s still waiting on his keys to this city. In March 2020, our collaborative effort gave birth to Ireland’s first global Covid conference (attended by Tánaiste Michael Martin) between Irish healthcare workers and frontline Chinese Doctors based in Wuhan. Healthcare workers from all of Ireland’s major hospitals “Zoomed” in from around the country and further afield, doctors from Cambridge and Oxford joined. The event went on to be repeated and televised on RTÉ.
This was all early days. Pre-lockdown, with the harrowing images of body bags and military trucks in Northern Italy flooding TV screens. Doomsday models of 180,000 dead in Ireland orchestrating fear to a macabre crescendo. There was a war room vibe and siege mentality in the Bons Conference room that day. The sense of foreboding etched into the brows of all in attendance.
The HSE was scrambling, we needed help ... The Chinese answered. No politics or posturing. We put out the call and they answered, doctor to doctor. The exchange between Ireland and China was hugely significant forming a foundation for the early use of steroids in severe Covid cases here in Ireland (predating official EU medical advice by several months), ultimately translating to lives saved here.
It also led to the dissemination of a translated version of China’s official Covid policy booklet which I personally gave to HSE Clinical Lead Dr Colm Henry providing a vital template for how to effectively mitigate Covid.
It detailed the use of PPE, setup of fever clinics, testing strategy, therapeutics, the use of big data and contact tracing. The conference also directly led to the sourcing of vital COVID PCR testing equipment and PPE supplies during a time of national/global shortage, a success story that was announced in the Dail and allowed our testing capacity to match international best practices at the time (Special thanks to Head of clinical testing at HSE, Dr Damien McCallion, and to Prof Paddy Mallon).
It took me a long time to write this article, a lot longer than is explained by my penchant for tardiness and my proclivity for serial procrastination. China today is a topic unfairly fraught with political divisiveness.
Our national discourse focused through a lens of Western bias and curated contention, disseminated largely by commentators that have never stepped foot in the country. Their ignorance does you a disservice. My story is a simple one and my main thesis can be distilled into one sentence. China offers huge opportunities for Ireland and the Irish.
Our often-lauded success in China’s food sector is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what China has to offer Ireland and what we the Irish can bring to the table in China. With China betting big on growth in EVs, biotech, e-commerce, pharma, healthcare, internet of things, augmented/mixed reality, education, telecommunications, AI, Agri-tech, environmental rectification, sport, and food there exist huge synergies. Our current focus with China is basically food and more specifically a focus on high volume low value commodity trade, but there exists huge opportunities for finished product that can leverage China’s behemoth ecommerce sector and its huge consumer demand for healthy products, functional foods, value-added dairy, foods for special medical purposes, alcoholic beverages and spirits, aquaculture, sports nutrition etc.
China is a country in flux, always in transition. Tectonic forces of industrialization, commercialization, rapid technological progress, shifting demographics, cultural transition are constantly churning up new opportunities.
With a strong foundation of cooperation between Ireland and China its important now that more Irish people get exposed to working and living in China. As a nation we must form our opinions based on the empirical. Boots on ground. Before you form an opinion go there, see the place, know the people and the culture. I’m the case study. Proof of principle Our healthcare system in Ireland is buckling under the weight of some 5 million people. We are reeling from crisis to crisis (cybercrime, waiting lists, infrastructure costs and hospital building times, overworked staff, migration of qualified workers, the list goes on). Having spent years in some of the best hospitals in China, I can confidently say we have much we can learn from our Chinese counterparts.
AI diagnostics, digital health records integrated to ubiquitous consumer apps, digital triage systems, lower cost healthcare, reduced A&E waiting times, lower costs etc. The memories of 1,000-bed Covid fever clinics built in several days serve in stark contrast to our ongoing children’s hospital debacle. Ireland needs some out of the box thinking and China’s rapid development and technological success serves as a huge untapped resource. We have much to gain from closer bilateral relations with China.
