The outside of the Vietnam Sports Hospital, a $3.25 million project which broke ground in 2001.

A Hanoi hospital, considered the leading sports medicine facility in Southeast Asia when it opened last year, is looking dilapidated despite repeated repairs to the building.

The hospital, financed by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Physical Training and Sport Science Institute, broke ground in 2001 in preparation for the 22nd Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam in 2003.

However, the construction of the VND52 billion (US$3.25 million) project was not completed until last year, well after the games had come and gone.

It is the country’s first-ever hospital specializing in the treatment of sports injuries, equipped with 100 beds and modern facilities in 15 wards. The facility was designed to be able to provide diagnosis, treatment, orthopedics, physical therapy, sports medicine studies and doping testing.

The hospital’s four-story building was constructed by Vietnam Construction Joint-Stock Company No. 15, under Vietnam Construction & Import Export Corporation (Vinaconex Corp.), on an area of 1.5 hectares next to the My Dinh Stadium.

Hospital staff said there were cracks on the walls, floor and ceiling of the building and that some of the modern equipment had never been used because of the shoddy state of the building.

Hospital Deputy Director Pham Xuan Nga said the repairs had been underway for some time.

“It [the building] has shown gradual deterioration in many places,” he said. “The problem was only minor until recently.

“I don’t know the cause but the areas in front and surrounding the building have sunk again and again after several repairs,” he said. “A sunken area on the first floor was repaired once but recently it has started sinking again.”

Nga also said that leaks on many floors could be blamed on the structure’s European design, which did not take into account local weather conditions.

Head of the hospital’s Administrative Department, Vu Thi Bich Loan, said the hospital had been repaired for the first time in 2007, right after it opened.

Loan said the hospital had asked the builder to repair many cracks and sunken areas.

During a recent visit, Thanh Nien reporters found a number of faults in the building.

A 10-meter-long crack is visible at the front entrance and many other cracks on the exterior walls can be easily seen from the outside.

Some of the windows were cracked and some window frames distorted because the ground had sunk and the pavers around the building were loose and lifting up in many places.

Inside the building, workers were peeling off tiles in some rooms to repair sunken floors, while on the fourth floor there were puddles of water everywhere.

A doctor said some of the leaks could fill a bucket when it rained.

A crack in room 115, an operating theater, stretched the length of one wall, he said.

He said the ceiling of a postoperative recovery room had fallen in once but luckily no one was injured.

Equipment in storage

The deteriorations have left several rooms unable to be used. As a result, some of the hospital equipment has only recently been installed.

Pham Xuan Vu, an official from the hospital’s administrative department, said a diagnostic machine, valued at VND7 billion ($422,131) had to be put in storage for a long time while the room it was intended for was repaired.

Vu said most medical equipment had to be installed in specially-designed rooms in order to work properly.

He said in one room a machine used to process medical waste was also out of order because the floor had sunk.

“We have to wait until the floor is repaired before we can bring the machine back into operation,” he said.

Many doctors and nurses complained an endoscope machine was still not in use because its intended room had a sunken floor.

The staff also said leaking rainwater had compromised some operating theaters and sterile rooms.

Some of the hospital equipment had been damaged by power surges, with the building’s power supply constantly interrupted because of the cracked and sunken floors, hospital staff said.

Reported by Thanh Thuy – Kap Thanh Long