A doctor uses an ultrasound machine at Ho Chi Minh City’s Medic Medical Center.

A story about when and how ultrasound was introduced into Vietnam.

Using just their hands and observing, the doctors agreed without certainty that the condition was cholecystitis, or inflammation of the gallbladder.

Dr. Phan Thanh Hai remembers “we then hesitated over whether to perform surgery on her or not, because we had no means of confirming our diagnosis for sure.”

Although his mother finally recovered without surgery, Huyen was concerned about the shortage of medical devices in his country.

“We need to bring the necessary diagnostic devices to the country by all means,” Hai quotes Huyen as saying.

Huyen, now the president of the German Vietnamese Association of Cardiology, then asked his neighbor, ultrasound expert Dr. Ulirich Meckler, for help.

Together with Sybille Weber, the late general secretary of German-owned organization Help Action for Vietnam, which worked to provide funding for Vietnamese projects in various fields including the medical sector, Meckler launched a project to provide local hospitals with ultrasound devices and know-how.

In April, 1986, Meckler taught the first ultrasound class for 25 Vietnamese doctors at HCMC’s Gia Dinh People’s Hospital.

At the same time, Weber donated Vietnam’s first-ever ultrasound system, a Kontron Sigma 20, to Gia Dinh.

“It was the first time local doctors saw an ultrasound machine with their own eyes and had a chance to see the human viscera that way,” says Hai, who is now the director of HCMC’s Medic Medical Center.

They were very excited to make their first ultrasound diagnosis on a patient, Hai adds.

A female patient was soon admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pain. The machine was employed without hesitation and using the ultrasound, doctors discovered a worm in her gallbladder, he says.

Meckler then kept Vietnam’s first ultrasound picture as a souvenir.

When the first class ended, Hai, who was then 27, was chosen to attend an intensive course in Germany. He came back a year later in 1988 with more machines donated by Weber. He also began training local doctors to use ultrasound systems.

That same year, France’s Aide Médicale et Développement (Medical Assistance and Development) opened its first obstetrics and gynecology ultrasound class at HCMC’s Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital.

A year later, the humanitarian organization brought cardio ultrasound techniques to Vietnam.

Now, the country has more than 15,000 ultrasound-trained doctors and over 10,000 ultrasound machines of various kinds. Each hospital has two to three machines on average, including color machines introduced in 2000 as well as 3D and 4D ultrasound machines introduced in 2005.

Reported by Thanh Tung