A common sense at any hospital in HCMC: the beds are overloaded and patients have to rest outside

The municipal administration should rethink its ban on rebuilding or expansion of new facilities in hospitals within the city, the city’s legislature said.

The city had issued the ban in December 2007, allowing rebuilding or expansion of hospitals, universities, colleges, and high schools only in outlying districts.

The ban aimed to protect the city’s infrastructure from being downgraded because of overload and ease traffic gridlocks, the administration had said.

But the city’s Health Department said at a recent meeting with the People’s Council that hospitals in the heart of the city were struggling to deal with sharp increases in the number of patients.

The hospitals also complained that their facilities were crumbling and could even collapse at any time. They are in desperate need of expansion and upgrade, hospital leaders said.

They also said their planned upgrades had stalled because of the ban, as had expansion projects approved earlier.

Impractical

The Economic Board of the People’s Council has said it had proposed the city government reconsider its ban because it was not feasible.

The board said upgrading and expansion of hospital facilities would not affect the infrastructure or cause more traffic gridlocks as feared by the city government.

It would, on the other hand, boost the health sector so it could match other cities in the region, the board said.

The board also argued that while the city government had deputed the Department of Zoning and Architecture to complete zoning plans to build international-level health centers in outlying districts in January 2008, the project has so far remained on paper.

It also pointed out the inherent contradiction in asking its hospitals to upgrade facilities to meet regional standards, but prohibiting their expansion.

Misguided priorities

A hospital director, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the expansion project planned by his hospital had been stopped by the ban.

“The city bars the expansion but in the meantime has auctioned many prime land lots for building skyscrapers, trade centers, or restaurants,” he said.

“If we make a comparison, it is easy to realize that the number of people coming to a trade center or a skyscraper is roughly equivalent to that of a hospital,” he said.

“The closer a resident lives to the hospital, the better for him if any emergency happens.”

He also said if city authorities look to ease the pressure of people on the infrastructure and traffic, it would be better to relocate the trade centers and skyscrapers to the outskirts of the city.

Operation slowdown

Though the HCMC People’s Committee has granted VND60 billion to upgrade the Saigon Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, the ban had put the brake on it.

“We are struggling to cope with overcrowding,” said hospital director Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung.

Children’s Hospital No. 2 has a similar problem.

Inpatient departments at the hospital, which was built during the French colonial period, are overloaded by some 40 patients a day “The hospital building could collapse at anytime,” said hospital director Ha Manh Tuan said, adding many French experts had also warned of this problem.

The Gia Dinh Hospital, a major general hospital in HCMC, also said it had virtually completed the procedures to build a 14-story treatment building inside its campus. But the ban had thwarted the project implementation, the hospital management said.

Another project to build a nine-story building with 10 operating rooms for the Nguyen Trai Hospital had also stalled after the ban.

Hung Vuong Hospital authorities said construction of another building to improve personnel training and develop intensive treatment has remained a pipe dream.

Reported by Thanh Tung – Minh Nam