Returning to Mauritius: family, community and what we learn
How well do we understand the communities we’re preparing physiotherapists to serve?
As a consultant musculoskeletal physiotherapist in primary care and Assistant Professor in Physiotherapy at Coventry University, I spend much of my working life thinking about rehabilitation, clinical reasoning and how education connects with services.
During a recent family visit to Mauritius, those professional questions became intertwined with something more personal and my own heritage. My father’s side of the family lives in Mauritius. Travelling with him, my wife Emma and our children, Eva and Ed, gave me the opportunity to reconnect with relatives and revisit familiar places, while sharing this part of my heritage with my family. Visiting relatives took us into different neighbourhoods and communities across the island. Spending time in their homes and hearing about daily life gave me a fuller appreciation of a place I had known through family connections and earlier visits. It also prompted questions about how people’s circumstances shape their health and access to care.
A taste I remembered
One of my lasting memories of visiting Mauritius as a teenager is eating dholl puri. Finding it again became a small mission of its own, from Port Louis Market to vendors selling it from the back of a bicycle, just as I remembered. The market felt more commercial than the roadside encounters I recalled, but the familiar taste brought those memories straight back. For a moment, that earlier visit felt like yesterday.
Then there was alouda, the cold, sweetened milk with soaked basil seeds, known locally as toukmaria, and fine strands of agar-agar jelly. I remembered the little seeds looking rather like tadpoles, but their texture was as familiar as the taste. These encounters also made me think about the people preparing and selling the food. For me, stopping for dholl puri was a chance to revisit a teenage memory and for the vendor, it was part of the working day and earning a living.
That stayed with me as we travelled around the island, the familiar foods connecting generations, alongside the daily work and responsibilities of the communities we were visiting.
One trip, different connections
For Emma, this was her first time meeting my father’s side of the family in Mauritius. Sharing those introductions with her has been an important part of the visit. Eva, now 20 and in her second year at university, connected through conversations with relatives who had studied, graduated, travelled, worked and lived in different countries. Hearing about their choices and experiences opened her eyes to possibilities she hadn’t necessarily considered. For Ed, football and weightlifting offered a way in. Training with the under-17 national football squad and the national weightlifting team brought him into contact with people through interests that already mean a great deal to him. We were grateful for the welcome and the time people gave him.
Watching them develop their own connections has made me think about how a family’s relationship with a place changes across generations. It has also reminded me how much learning begins with a conversation.
Rehabilitation in everyday life
Alongside those experiences, I found myself thinking about rehabilitation, with people recovering after illness or injury, living with pain, and remaining independent as health changes. What does a rehabilitation plan look like when someone needs to keep working or relies on a relative to reach a clinic? How might priorities differ between a younger person and their parents or grandparents?
Mauritius’s 2021 national survey estimated that around one in five adults aged 25–74 had type 2 diabetes, alongside substantial levels of obesity. The National Integrated NCD Action Plan 2023–2028 and Obesity Action Acceleration Roadmap 2025–2030 set out responses through prevention, primary care and communities. Rehabilitation has a contribution to make within that wider picture. Research also points to the importance of access. Public healthcare provides significant support for poorer households, while direct healthcare spending can still place a heavier burden on those with less income. A small study of people with neurological disability and their family caregivers, interviewed in 2021–2022, described difficulties with transport, accessibility, rehabilitation and the demands of caring.
It brings me back to a familiar clinical question of how much do we understand about the life into which we are asking someone to fit our advice?
Understanding the local picture
During the visit, I had the opportunity to meet Professor Dhanjay Jhurry at Uniciti International Education Hub. It was valuable to hear about their journey towards introducing their first physiotherapy degree and the thinking behind its development. Our conversation explored healthcare expectations, rehabilitation and education, including how teaching approaches can prepare students for the communities and services they will encounter. It prompted reflection on the relationship between a curriculum, the experiences students bring and the realities of clinical practice.
The wider workforce provides some context. Mauritius reported 133 registered physiotherapists at the end of 2024, with 30 listed in the public sector. These figures cannot describe the full availability of rehabilitation, but they raise questions about access, workforce development and the support needed for clinical education. Public physiotherapy is accessed through medical referral, while private patients can self-refer. Understanding those pathways means considering how people seek help, how professionals work together and what support is available throughout rehabilitation.
The discussion reinforced how closely education and healthcare are connected. Developing a degree involves relationships with clinicians, communities, employers, professional bodies and regulators, alongside decisions about what students learn and how they learn it.
Shared principles, local realities
These questions felt familiar from my work at Coventry University, leading the physiotherapy apprenticeship and contributing to undergraduate and postgraduate education. Connecting learning with the realities of practice is a recurring consideration. Our discussion offered a different perspective on that relationship. Clinical reasoning provides a shared professional language, but its application is shaped by local healthcare pathways, resources, patient expectations and family circumstances. It made me consider which principles translate readily between settings, and where understanding the local context needs to come first.
The idea of care closer to home, familiar from my work in the NHS, took on particular relevance. How far does someone need to travel for rehabilitation? Is transport available? Does attending an appointment mean losing income or relying on a relative? What role might community services and outreach play? Those practical questions belong within clinical reasoning and education. Understanding someone’s condition also means considering whether the proposed care is manageable in their everyday life.
Building that understanding takes time and involves academic teams, clinicians, students, employers, patients and families. The discussion left me reflecting on both Mauritius and the UK, in terms of how well do the pathways we design and the education underpinning them reflect the lives of the people using them?
Learning across communities and generations
These conversations made me reflect on my own work in physiotherapy education. Hearing how others approach familiar challenges can reveal assumptions we barely notice in our usual setting about how patients reach services, what support families provide, or what makes rehabilitation manageable. The family visits added another perspective. Relatives spoke about studying, working and living in different countries, with experiences that interested Eva as she considers her own future. Listening to those conversations reminded me how much people bring to education beyond their academic qualifications. It made me consider how well we recognise that experience in our students, and what it contributes to our understanding of health and care.
There was also much to reflect on in the range of people involved in developing education and services. Patients and families, clinicians and academic teams, employers, professional bodies, regulators, funders and policymakers each see different parts of the picture. Understanding how those perspectives come together takes time, and a willingness to learn from one another.
Across both the family visits and professional discussions, I found myself listening with a different awareness. Mauritius was familiar through my heritage and earlier memories, but there was still plenty for me to discover.
Taking something home
Returning to Mauritius gave me time to reconnect with family and see familiar places with a different perspective. Conversations about work, education and healthcare made me reflect on how experiences across countries and generations shape what we learn and expect from care.
Back in the UK, those reflections are relevant to my work with students and patients: how much space do we give people to share that experience, and how does it influence our teaching and clinical decisions? For me, this visit brought a personal connection to questions I regularly consider in my professional life.
Mersi mo fami pou zot lakey.
Further reading
- Mauritius Non-Communicable Diseases Survey 2021.
- National Integrated NCD Action Plan 2023–2028 and Obesity Action Acceleration Roadmap 2025–2030.
- Improving equity in the distribution and financing of health services in Mauritius. BMJ Global Health, 2021.
- Perspectives of Mauritians living with neurological disability and their family caregivers. Pan African Medical Journal, 2025.
- Population and Vital Statistics, January–June 2026 and Health Statistics Report 2024, p. 49.
- Ministry of Health and Wellness Annual Report 2024–2025 and World Physiotherapy: Mauritius profile.
- World Physiotherapy curriculum guidance and World Physiotherapy Congress.