The number of new born babies in HCM
City in the first days of the new lunar year increased over the same period last
year because the Year of Cat is considered a lucky year, doctors say.

In the
Tu Du Hospital’s Obstetrics Ward in District 1, there was no bed left vacant
last Friday and some pregnant women even had to lie outside.

Nguyen
Thi Ngoc Thom of District 6 was anxious about not having a bed after giving
birth to her baby in a day or two. Her husband had booked the bed two days in
advance, but as of last Friday she’d not been assigned one.

Dr. Le
Quang Thanh, head of the hospital’s General Planning Office, also said that the
number of newborns was likely to increase this year.

Since
people believe that the preceding lunar year, the Year of the Tiger, is not an
auspicious time for babies to be born, many couples chose to wait for the Year
of the Cat, Thanh explained.

Last
year, the number of newborns had decreased by 30 per cent over 2009, he said.

In
Obstetrics Ward of the city’s University Medical Centre in Tan Binh District,
135 babies were born since February 3.

Nguyen
Van Anh, head of the ward, said that in the days before Tet, around 20 babies
were born each day, but the number has risen to 25 since.

At the
Hung Vuong Hospital, 100 babies were born per day in the first days of this
month compared to 80 babies in previous months.

According to the city’s Department of Health, 447 babies were born in the first
three days of this lunar year (February 3-5).

Doctors
in the city hospitals said the number of pregnant women visiting obstetric wards
for checking up on their foetus had increased significantly in January and first
weeks of February.

Dr.
Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuong of the Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital said they admitted
around 1,000 pregnant women in the first days after the Lunar New Year.

Hospital
records show that 72,000 pregnant women visited the hospital in January, an
increase of 19,000 over the same period last year, Phuong said. Of these, 40 per
cent came from the city’s neigbouring provinces, she added.

Since
the third day of the Lunar year (February 5), the hospital has been crowded with
pregnant women and their relatives.

Hoang
Van Tam of Mekong Delta Long An Province drove his wife to the hospital at
around 4 a.m. last Friday nine but it was not until late afternoon that she
received her check-up.

The long
wait had left them tired, Tam said.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News