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Doctor who took pains to eliminate labour pain

ABU DHABI — Dr Mahmoud Youssif has been the chief anaesthetist at Al Noor Hospital here since 1991. A few months ago, in June 2006, he received an award of recognition from Al Noor, as the best head of department. Since his arrival in the UAE capital from Cairo, Egypt, nearly 16 years ago, Dr Youssif has never looked back.

“I remember I received a phone call from a friend, who was already working at Al Noor and he asked me if I was interested to join the hospital, as it needs an anaesthetist doctor. I agreed,” the doctor tells Khaleej Times.

Dr Youssif arrived in Abu Dhabi on May 17, 1991, and three days later he started his new job. The previous anaesthetist had left the department a week before and there was a lot of work to be done. “I remember my first patient, a local woman who was in a very critical condition because of side effects from medicines. The manager came to me and asked if I could do anything for her and I said I can. I removed my jacket, prepared everything and was able to reverse all those side effects that could have killed her. By the evening, she fully recovered. After that she sent me the biggest and loveliest bouquet of flowers that touched the ceiling,” recounts Dr Youssif.

For the first five years, Dr Youssif worked alone in the anaesthesia department with the help from an anaesthetic technician. In those years, they both used to be on a 24-hour call. When not busy in the surgery room, the doctor took the time off to improve the department.

“When I arrived here, the department could only do 50 surgeries per month, but after one year the number reached 150 and within five years I was doing 200-250 surgeries in a month. Now we do up to 450 surgeries per month,” Dr Youssif says.

What really made him famous, though, was epidural analgesia, which eliminates the labour pain. Unlike anaesthesia, analgesia only affects the sensors, not the motor, so the patient can still move, but does not feel the pain. In Abu Dhabi’s private hospitals, nobody was doing this procedure.

“Once the women found out I can do this, they all started to come to me,” reveals Dr Youssif, adding “During normal delivery, the woman is in a lot of pain, screaming and shouting all the time, but with epidural analgesia she can stay in labour for 10-12 hours without feeling any pain. She can even watch TV, laugh or read a book within 15-20 minutes after giving birth.”

Dr Youssif even remembers one woman, married to a national, who kept refusing to become pregnant because she was terrified of birth pains. Eventually, after the doctor explained to her this method of painless labour, she agreed to try. Now she has five children.

Although he does miss Egypt and visits his home country every year on holiday, Dr Youssif feels very much at home in Abu Dhabi. “When I was offered this job at Al Noor it was the first time I had left Egypt. I had never even visited an Arab country before and I did not imagine it will be so nice. I had thought that there will be just desert and oil fields, but I found many parks and gardens, the beach was so beautiful and the people really nice,” says the doctor.

He also became very popular with his colleagues. “I don’t know why, may be because I’m an Egyptian or because of my personality, but everyone liked me so much,” recalls Dr Youssif.

Not everything remained the same, though. Dr Mahmoud Youssif is quite disappointed with the not-so-positive changes in the capital — the heavy traffic, the lack of parking space and the enormous rise in rental accommodation. “Even clubs have been closed down — like the Tourist Club or the Water and Electricity Club. I was a member of Tourist Club for ten years and it was such a nice place to go with your family — there were sport grounds, playing areas for kids, swimming pool, a nice beach, restaurants — all at reasonable prices. Now there is no entertainment left for families. Just hotels, but you can’t go to hotels all the time,” says the doctor.

Despite the transition, he still finds Abu Dhabi one of the nicest and safest cities in the world.

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