Medical Care in Holland

Everyone I know here has complained about the standard of care they get from the medical system here. Now I've found the worst example yet of this. A colleague recently became ill and took herself to the hospital. She was showing all the classic symptoms of meningitis. They placed her into a room with other patients while they ran their tests. They did not tell her what they were suspecting or ruling out, even though it was clear they knew. When we went to the hospital, not many people there could speak useful english. In a country where even the janitors speak fluent english, how can medical professionals not? We asked if she was contagious. The nurse said yes. We asked a few more times and she said yes. So we asked if we would get sick, she said no she wasn't contagious. The nurse didn't really understand the word contagious. It turns out my colleague did have meningitis, but the viral kind not the more severe bacterial kind. Still, I would have expected them to take precautions (such as keeping her away from people) and treat it like the more severe form until they knew for sure what it was. When it came time to discharge her, they didn't tell her what she had. Instead, they called it "brain flesh infection" and sent her home without any explanation of what to do to get better, or even when it would be safe to go back to work. She called her personal doctor to ask more about the disease, and her doctor refused to believe she actually had meningitis, even though her medical papers clearly said it. I really don't know what I would do here if I got sick and needed urgent attention. I certainly don't trust that I would get quality treatment here.