Around 40,000 Vietnamese go abroad for medical treatment annually. They pay
more than $1 billion for the services, but many of them spend money and only
get worse.

Expensive services

Overseas treatment services have been advertised loudly in Vietnam.
Many hospitals in Thailand
and Singapore have opened
their representative offices in Vietnam
to advertise their services.

In HCM City, meetings with doctors from Thailand and Singapore are held very often.
After consultation on fatal diseases like cancers, cardiovascular, etc.
organizers always advertise overseas treatment services at modern hospitals,
where almost all fatal diseases can be cured.

“The requirement for high-quality medical treatment of Vietnamese
is rising, so many foreign hospitals have opened their representative offices
in Vietnam,” said a doctor
from the HCM City Cancer and Turmor
Hospital.

The doctor said that the hospital has at least 500 patients
going abroad for medical treatment a year.

The representative of a Bangkok-based hospital in HCM City
said, that since 2000, around 5,000 Vietnamese patients have been cured at his
hospital in Bangkok.

Some Thai hospitals advertise that they offer luxurious
hotels for foreign patients in Bangkok, and also
helicopter service from Vietnam
to Thailand.
Patients will be treated like gods. However, the services are priced from
several thousands to hundreds of thousands of USD.

Some foreign-funded clinics in Hanoi
and HCM City
have offered packaged transport services for Vietnamese patients from Vietnam
to foreign hospitals by air. Patients will be taken care by hospitals during
the flight.

This service charge is up to $50,000/flight, but it is sold
well. An employee of a HCM City-based clinic said that her clinic transports
100-150 Vietnamese patients to foreign hospitals, mainly in Singapore and the US.

Some Vietnamese hospitals, for example FV Hospital, have
cooperated with foreign hospitals to bring Vietnamese patients overseas and
take care of them in Vietnam
after surgery.

Several Australian firms provide specialized aircraft to
transport patients from Vietnam
to Australia
for emergency aid, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Australian
dollars/trip.

Running out of money
for overseas treatment

After seeing two acquaintances who were successfully treated
in Singapore, Hoai Anh, 42 from Go Vap district, HCM City, decided to bring his
son to Singapore for medical treatment, at the price of SG$30,000.

“She and her husband are teachers, so they had to borrow
money from relatives of both sides to bring her son to Singapore. They have only one son!”
Hoai Anh’s mother,Mrs. Hoa,said.

According to representative offices of foreign hospitals in Vietnam, a kidney transplant surgery in Thailand or Singapore is priced from $30,000 to
$50,000. In Vietnam,
the cost for a kidney transplant surgery totals only VND80 million ($4,000).
Though who have health insurance, have to pay only VND60 million ($3,000).

Nearly three years after her husband returned from a
hospital in Thailand, Hai
Yen, 46, from District 7, HCM
City has not paid out her
debt.

“My husband was detected with marrow trouble at a local
hospital three years ago. I brought him to Thailand for treatment. The cost
for treatment was more than $50,000, plus thousands of USD for accommodations
and traveling,” Yen said.

Yen’s two-story house on Huynh Tan Phat road, District 7 is
now mortgaged to a bank, while her husband’s disease is not cured yet.

Some of Yen’s friends also went overseas for treatment. A
man named Ha in District 3, HCM
City, was diagnosed with
kidney failure. Ha neglected the kidney transplant service at HCM City’s
Cho Ray hospital to go to a Singaporean hospital in according to advertisement
of its representative office in Vietnam.
The man was very disappointed, because the Singaporean hospital is similar to a
Vietnamese hospital. However, he paid over $3,000 for the trip and $2,000 for
tests, so he had to maintain the service.

PV