Gap Fill
A. Complete each sentence with one of the words given.
Hip / Avarice / Zenith / Abhor / Chide / Oblivious / Cajole / Taciturn / Nadir / Alacrity / Penchant / Morose / Flabbergasted / Brazen / Vexed / Serendepity / Impertinent / Embezzle
(Para ver las soluciones haga click en el cuadro; doble click vuelve a posición original)
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Listening
Cutting edge medicine
Rory Carroll
Guardian Weekly
Another trolley is wheeled into the surgical pit with another stab victim, a man lying face down with eight puncture wounds in his back and a grape-sized hole in his neck. A few metres away a patient who was skewered in his left flank with a screwdriver or knife is having a plastic tube inserted into his lung. If the chest is not re-expanded, he could die.
Out in the corridor a man with dreadlocks limps past, trailing flecks of crimson on the tiled floor. He has been shot in the buttocks, but there is no exit wound. The bullet is inside his body. A line of glassy-eyed people on a bench barely notice him. Also wounded, they wait for their turn to see a doctor. A distant siren wails, heralding more arrivals.
Some would call this a scene from Dante's Inferno. Staff of the trauma unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, by some measures the world's biggest, call it a quiet night. The sprawl of wards and clinics at Bara, as the hospital is known, serves more than 3 million residents of Soweto and some of the poorest, toughest parts of Johannesburg. Some nights the unit's queue of wounded stretches around the building. The vast majority are casualties of crime and traffic accidents. For South Africa, the level of carnage is a tragedy. For foreign medical professionals, it is an opportunity to learn. "I worked as a paramedic in Germany for nine years and never saw a gunshot wound. Here on my first night I saw 10," says Roman Pawlik, 28, an intern from Munich.
For more than a decade civilian doctors have flocked to Johannesburg to treat a variety and volume of injuries seldom seen in Europe or North America. Now they are being followed by military colleagues. Over the past year medics from the German and British forces have worked in South Africa's most violent city, honing skills that could be needed in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
"It's frightening that people come to Johannesburg, our home, as preparation for a war zone," says Feroza Mohammed, a trauma doctor at Bara. But she welcomes the extra hands. There is a dire shortage of skilled surgeons.
Four German military doctors have worked at Bara, usually one at a time in 3½-month stints. British military medics work across town at Johannesburg general hospital. Currently there are one from the Royal Navy and two from the army. "Our surgeons have gained valuable experience in trauma and surgical techniques," said a British high commission spokesman.
But a question mark hangs over the scheme's future. Jacques Goosen, the head of trauma at Johannesburg general hospital, said he had been notified that it would not be renewed when the present British intake ends its tour next month. "In my personal capacity I consider it a great pity. There is mutual benefit and that will be lost," he said.
There has been no official announcement, but it is alleged that the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, resented British troops operating in a public hospital. No concern was voiced about the Germans, prompting speculation that UK involvement in Iraq, a war unpopular with the ruling African National Congress, prompted the objection. A health ministry spokesman, Sibani Mngadi, said the minister had requested information about the British presence but had not cancelled it.
However, the British Ministry of Defence said a new batch of medics would travel to South Africa in the new year. A request to visit the British at Johannesburg general hospital was denied, and it was not possible to reconcile the contrasting statements about the scheme's future.
The night spent at Bara's trauma unit leaves no doubt that military surgeons have much to learn from a city that recorded 694 murders last year and thousands of serious assaults. Recorded crime has plunged - from nine gunshot patients a day in 1994, the hospital is down to two - but it remains one of the world's highest rates and can evoke battlefield conditions. Staff tie blue plastic bags around their shoes to avoid bloodstains and put stickers marked "urgent" on the foreheads of the most seriously wounded.
After a relatively quiet start, the pace picks up after 2am with the arrival of a man with his skull cleaved open to expose his brain, a man with four machete-type hacks to his head and an unconscious youth with the grotesquely swollen features of one repeatedly smashed in the face with a blunt object. The gunshot victim is lucky. An x-ray shows the bullet is lodged in his left femur but there are no fractures. "Why was he shot? Maybe he was robbing someone. I don't want to know, that's not my job," says Todor Rosic, 40. The surgeon, a Montenegrin Serb from the former Yugoslavia, says he is training German medics bound for Kosovo who "end up treating my people who are being attacked by Albanians".
By 3am the floor is sticky with red blotches, and Gary Dos Passos, 28, is trying to insert a tube into a drunk with serious head injuries who is hysterical and has to be restrained by four nurses. The patient loses consciousness and the room goes quiet as the doctor fights to save him. The danger passes.
By 5am daylight is seeping through the windows and still the patients come, a line of bloodied bodies. They resemble battlefield casualties, but what brings most of them here are alcohol-related brawls, robberies and accidents. "We should get sponsorship from the beer companies," says Dr Rosic. "This gunshot was brought to you by . . ."
Questions
A. Listen carefully and answer the following questions.
