For many international families, medical insurance is one of the biggest expenses, and biggest worries. Unless you’re lucky enough to have insurance provided by your employer, you face the choice of paying a substantial sum for comprehensive coverage including international healthcare facilities, or saving money and paying for individual treatments or using local hospitals. Some families even gamble that the worst won’t happen, and have no insurance at all.
Even if you have cover though, co-pay can mean it’s still expensive to get treatments. And making a small claim can lead to big policy exclusions next time you have to renew. So whatever your insurance situation, it’s helpful to know how to buy generic medicines over the counter for simple medical problems, rather than having to pay to see a doctor, even if your Chinese is still basic.
To spare blushes I will draw a veil over which member of my family it was, and which condition, that inspired this blog. Suffice it to say that a little internet research saved us time, money, and embarrassment.
Say, for example, you have been to the gym, and you develop a scaly, itchy, red patch on your skin, which expands into a ring. Googling will soon reveal that this is ringworm: not in fact a worm, but a fungal infection, known as athlete’s foot when it develops on that part of the body. It’s common, easily treatable, but also annoying.
You could just find the Chinese name for this condition, but if you go the wrong pharmacy, you may end up with a ginseng-based remedy designed to restore your qi. Which is lovely, though you may in the short term at least prefer a medically-tested fungicide which will get rid of the annoying itch. In which case, another session of googling will give you the name of one such product: clotrimazole.
It’s important that you find the generic name for the medicine: in the West, clotrimazole is sold under the name Canesten, but you’re unlikely to find most Western brand names in China. If you know the brand name you need, you can find its generic name here: www.drugs.com/drug_information.html It’s worth noting that generic medicines are exactly the same as brand medicines, you’re not sacrificing quality!
At the pharmacy you will need the Chinese name for the medicine, and it may help to know the name of the condition too. Neither of my mainstay dictionaries – Pleco on my phone and Yabla on the internet – are particularly good on medical terms. Fortunately though, the Chinese version of Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org) is, and usually has the English names in the article, so you can find the right one on a search. So we discover that ringworm is
足癣 (Zú xuǎn)
and clotrimazole is
克催瑪汝 (Kè cuī mǎ rǔ)
Take a picture of these names, or copy-paste them to WeChat, and off you go to the pharmacy (make sure it has a green cross outside, or it’s ginseng for you!) You only need two more words of Chinese: (have) and (need). Point to your phone, say “足癣, 克催瑪汝”, and you should get what you need without difficulty.
(As always, if symptoms persist, or if you’re unsure, you should see a doctor.)
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