HE grew up a Freo boy, forged in the days when the old port town was “not dangerous as some thought, not hard but fair”, a place where “you stood your ground and were honest and fair”.
That code, he reckons, is what’s keeping him going now — stuck in a Dubai hospital bed, “with useless legs and pissing myself”, picking through the wreckage of a medical ordeal he says should never have happened.
Barrie Harmsworth — a John Curtin lad who remembers “the poms… the Diagos and Slavs, all bringing their cultures along with them” — left WA decades ago to work construction overseas, eventually becoming construction manager on the massive Dubai Dry Docks project.
Like many expats, he stayed for the sea, not the sand.
“I fell in love with sailing in the Gulf waters,” Mr Harmsworth said, later founding the Dubai–Muscat race and teaching “hundreds of young Emiratis how to sail”.
But close to 50 years after he first arrived in the Gulf, the city that once felt like a second Fremantle has, in his words, “finally outsmarted me”.
Mr Harmsworth’s troubles began long before Dubai’s skyline grew its current chrome-and-glass armour.
Twenty years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer — at a time when, he says, “it was suicide to get it treated here”, prompting him to fly to Melbourne for an “eight hour operation”.
But a tiny remnant of the cancer remained, meaning he needed ongoing hormonal therapy using Zoladex, a drug he describes as “a mean drug” that wipes testosterone and leaves men “weepy, with no libido and constant fatigue”.
So when he read about possible alternatives, he looked locally.
Dubai’s healthcare sector, once seen as risky, had changed under tighter government regulation.
The hospital he approached — Aster — had grown rapidly off the back of low-cost care, expanding from a single clinic into one of the UAE’s biggest private providers.
Mr Harmsworth made an appointment with an Aster urologist, who suggested he take Casodex, a drug similar to Zoladex but without the dreaded testosterone side effect.
“Great, I thought — I’ll have some of that.”
He walked out with the prescription.
What he didn’t know — and what he says the doctor never told him — was that
Casodex isn’t used the same way.
“What he didn’t tell me was that it was one-third the strength and you could not use the same technique. In fact, he should have said ‘no’.”
As months passed, his condition deteriorated.
Stomach pains grew.
In June last year he called an ambulance — only to find himself back at Aster’s emergency department.
“The young doctor treated me for gastritis and sent me home.” The next time, the same treatment.
On the third visit, things fell apart.
“While trying to stand me up, my legs gave way and I collapsed, urinating on the floor in the middle of emergency.”
Mr Harmsworth says what happened next spoke volumes about priorities.
“My urinating on the floor was treated as paramount, and they lugged me onto a bed while a cleaner raced in with a mop and bucket — not standard treatment, as every boy scout knows.”
Over the next two days came the scans. The cancer had spread, with one tumour found on his spine.
“Now they were in a pickle,” he said.
“They should have checked long ago, and I was in the wrong hospital for their treatment.
He rejected a transfer, arguing: “They broke me there, so they could fix me there.”
He alleges a tug-of-war began between medical staff and administration.
“Administration wanted the bill fully paid before I left.”
He waited four more days while his sons organised the $7,500 needed to cover his bill.
In the meantime, he made them an offer: “Let me out for free and I won’t tell.”
He says there was “No answer.”
Bomshell
But at a meeting, the hospital’s oncology speciality dropped the bombshell that he should never have been prescribed Casodex.
“Three bloody years too late,” Mr Harmsworth says.
When the payment finally arrived from his sons, “the fingerpointing stopped” and he was transferred to a government hospital, where he remains.
“They seriously know how to treat people — unlike Aster, who seem to do it on the wing.”
Aster’s rise in the UAE has been meteoric — but not without scrutiny.
In the past year the company has faced a whistleblower-triggered forensic audit into undisclosed vendor relationships and internal misconduct, while patient forums and expat groups have been littered with complaints about inconsistent care, slow diagnosis, and what some describe as profit-first, patient-second culture.
Critics argue the group grew too fast on low-cost staffing and tight margins, while its own management continues to insist it maintains high standards and government accreditation.
Aster senior PR and communication manager Udhayan Nair told the Herald the healthcare company took all matters of patient health and safety with “utmost seriousness”.
Privacy
“As a matter of policy, the Aster group never comments on patient matters out of our concern for the privacy of our patients and their families,” Mr Nair said.
“To do so would also be a violation of various laws, including data protection legislation.
“For any query, the patient will have to reach out to the concerned in the hospital and he would be supported accordingly.”
Mr Harmsworth is now fighting to regain mobility, and waiting to see what comes of the legal correspondence his lawyers have sent to Aster.
Two months ago English nurse Jennifer King set up a fundraising page to try and raise the $57,000 Mr Harmsworth needs before his current hospital will start treatment to try and shrink his tumour, describing it as a lifesaving operation.
“Medivac is even more expensive,” she said.
Ms King lived in Dubai for many years, and was awarded an MBE in the 2016 Queens honours list for her work with special need childrens in Abu Dhabi.
She says Mr Harmsworth and his wife didn’t have the money to fund the radiation treament.
To help Mr Harmsworth out, head to https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/jenniferjacqueline-king?utm_medium=CF&utm_source=CL
by STEVE GRANT