Dr. Mieu Tieu Chong checks on a patient on the night of the Lunar New Year’s Eve.

It wasn’t an easy path, but for Mieu Tieu Chong, becoming the first doctor in Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan provinces was well worth the struggle.

“Maybe medicine is my destiny,” Chong said.

As a child, he and his five siblings would study for half a day and work in the family’s field for the other half. Despite their efforts, the family still struggled to feed themselves.

In 1975, at age 19, Chong passed the entrance exam for the Finance and Accounting University in Ho Chi Minh City but couldn’t afford to attend the school.

Three years later, when the family had a little more money, his mother suggested he try to gain entrance into a medical university. Chong said his parents always wished he would become a doctor to help the locals in his hometown.

He was successful and gained entrance into the medicine department of the Central Highlands University in Dak Lak Province’s Buon Ma Thuot Town.

But the time in Buon Ma Thuot was tough.

“I thought many times about my mother working in the field to send every single dong to me and I was determined to study the best I could,” he said.

When he graduated, the university asked him to stay on as a lecturer but he refused, wanting instead to return to his hometown.

Since 1986, the honors graduate has been working as a surgeon at Bac Binh District hospital in south-central Ninh Thuan Province.

In the early days, the working environment was often lacking in basic equipment.

One night in 1986, a patient needed emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst but the generator used to power the hospital had broken. Chong knocked on his friend’s door at two o’clock in the morning and asked to borrow his generator. The patient was saved and the friend received a “thank you” coffee in the morning.

In 1988, Chong was appointed director of the hospital.

He focused on improving the skills of medical staff at the commune level and also placed high priority on raising locals’ awareness of proper medical care.

Medical staff at the commune level play a very important role in the overall medical network, Chong said.

“And people wouldn’t have to travel as much every time they’re ill,” he added.

Chong recalls “what a risky decision” he once made to operate on a 70-year-old patient who had a heart condition.

It was in 1989 and district hospitals like Chong’s were not authorized to carry out such operations. “But moving the patient would have killed him so I decided to operate on him,” Chong remembered.

At the time, there was not enough blood for a transfusion. A doctor and nurse of the same blood type were asked to help.

The patient went on to live a healthy life and now considers Chong a hero for saving his life.

Chong also saved a mother and her baby by performing another surgery in which staff donated their own blood.

Nguyen Thi Nga was hospitalized during her pregnancy suffering from anemia. Her pulse and blood pressure had dropped dangerously low.

“Any lateness [in deciding to operate] would lead to her death,” Chong said.

According to Chong, being a doctor “requires one to make bold but accurate decisions.”

There are many times when the difference between a patient living and dying is almost next to nothing, he said.

In 1999, the health department of Binh Thuan Province sent Chong to Hue city Medicine University for three years to acquire a Master of Arts degree in obstetrics.

Again, he completed his studies with top honors and the university transferred him for further study to the HCMC Medicine and Pharmacology University where he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis last October.

At 53, Chong is now the deputy director of a provincial general hospital in Binh Thuan. “The more I study, the more I find my errors,” he said. “I have learnt that medical study is one of the fields that require the most research and highest accuracy.”

Reported by Que Ha