Dr. James Masson (R) from Interplast Australia & New Zealand conducts plastic surgery on a burn victim at Ho Chi Minh City

A team of Australian surgeons wraps up a five-day charitable trip to Ho Chi Minh City today, after performing free plastic surgery for burn victims at the city’s Cho Ray Hospital.

The 20 patients were selected from a group of around 40, said Dong Quang Duyen, deputy head of the hospital’s Burn Unit.

Duyen said the hospital had been contacted by IANZ about two months beforehand. Doctors then had to choose the best candidates, most of them poor, to receive the surgery.

Part of the goal of the charity project is to transfer knowledge between doctors from different countries, and thus, each operation is carried out with both local and foreign staff, Duyen said.

“We come here to teach the young surgeons in plastic surgery in the burn unit in Cho Ray and we hope in the near feature to teach them microsurgery,” Meares added.

“It’s very good to teach and to help [Vietnamese medical staff] and the doctors here are very keen to learn,” Meares said. “Vietnamese are very good [with] their hands and the surgeons here are very good and quick to learn.”

The IANZ team has now carried out free surgery for more than 100 patients at Cho Ray since its first charity trip to the hospital six years ago, Meares said.

After finishing their work in HCMC, the team will travel to the central province of Quang Nam to conduct another week of surgeries.

This is the team’s first trip to Quang Nam, Meares said, adding that his team planned to perform similar surgeries for about 40 local patients.

“We go to Vietnam ever year and in the future I hope we’ll go to two or three places in Vietnam every year,” said Meares.

IANZ undertakes programs of plastic and reconstructive surgery and training in neighboring Asian Pacific Countries.

The organization sends about 30 teams to some 16 countries each year and sponsors doctors and nurses to receive training in Australia.

Reported by Van Khoa