April 27th 2010 - Day 4 in KSA: Stefano feeling sick, team around Jeddah

Waking up this morning was really hard: headache, nausea, ... I guess I was victim of withdrawal symptoms from the total lack of alchool since last friday (or may it have been the japanese sushi, or maybe too much blogging and to less sleeping ...). Anyway, I woke up, had a shower and reached Khalid at the lobby; Khalid will be our guide in Jeddah for the next two days and he prepared our schedule around the hospitals of the city. I'm definitely not at my best and decide that I won't join the team for the morning, so I have to rely on what they told me to update our followers with the latest news from Saudi.

The first stage is at the opening of the Saudi Critical Care Society conference; since the speakers speak arabian, the most remarkable element the team reported from the experience is the high quality of mango fruit juice.



After this the team has an interlocutory meeting at the King Fahad Military Hospital followed by two really good meetings: one at the local offices of the Ministry of Health, and one at the Saudi German Hospitals. When Brian, Roberto and Youssef get back to the hotel I'm feeling much better and can join them to discuss about these days in KSA and write a draft of the daily report with all notes and impressions from the hospitals we visited (the report is slightly different from what you can read in this blog: two complementary tales of the same working trip experience).

Tonight we'll meet again with the guys of RTKL and continue our discussions on technology assessment and planning, Ferrari, strange transplant interventions, etc.

I leave you with a sight of Jeddah at sunset taken from the 16th floor of the hotel (click on it to see it larger); I can't already say much about the city, but I feel this place is really different from what I used to know. Tonight Khalid is taking us around the city; I'm not sure I'll post again (if I don't take a long sleep tonight I fear tomorrow morning I'll be again out of order), but I promise I'll soon give you further insights into this city sitting on the Red Sea.