LookAtVietnam – Management of Children’s Hospital 2 in downtown HCMC on Wednesday blatantly objected to a VND3.2tril plan to rebuild the hospital into a modern one

A view of Children Hospital 2 in downtown HCM City.

Tuan said at a meeting with the HCMC Department of Health on Wednesday, which was closed to the media, that the reconstruction plan was merely a waste of money and human resources as the hospital had recently undergone a costly upgrade, according to a transcript of the meeting provided by a senior hospital staff member.

The Compensation Clearance Corporation proposed two schemes for reconstruction of the biggest hospital for children in the country’s south.

In the first scheme, the company suggested rebuilding the hospital at its current 86,000-square-meter premises with a construction density of up to 35% into a 10-story institution with 1,000 beds.

In the second scheme, the company will develop about 57,600 of the total 86,000 square meters and setting aside about 3,200 square meters for a road connecting Thai Van Lung and Le Thanh Ton streets surrounding the hospital. Meanwhile, the remaining land will be put up for auction to raise funds for recouping the investment capital for the reconstruction project.

Pham Ngoc Lam, chairman of the corporation, said his corporation would be spending all the capital required for the project.

If the Government approves the first scheme, Lam said, a lot of land valued at around VND3.2 trillion will be found for allocation to the investor. If the second scheme gets the go-ahead, a little more than 25,000 square meters of land inside the hospital premises will be assigned to his company to organize an auction.

But hospital management and staff have condemned the project. Director Tuan said the hospital had already spent VND38.8 billion building a new facility with 500 beds and that it had finished undergrounding telecom and electricity cables and was working on plans to build an organ transplant ward.

“If we demolish the newly built facility, this will result in a huge waste of money and human resources,” Tuan said.

Tuan expressed concern that if the project was approved, medical examination and treatment fees would be certainly increased to recover the investment capital. Under the proposed reconstruction project, the construction cost would reach a staggering VND1.8 billion per bed.

“Our hospital mainly serves children of poor and low-income families. If hospital fees are up, these children cannot have access to our medical services,” he said.

Many doctors shared Tuan’s view, saying they did not know about the project before it went before the Government and the city’s authorities.

A doctor speculated that the prime location of the hospital was what the Compensation Clearance Corporation was eyeing.

The hospital is surrounded by Ly Tu Trong, Chu Manh Trinh, Nguyen Du and Ly Tu Trong streets in District 1, and by commercial centers, luxury apartment buildings and retail stores.

Despite the hospital’s objection, the city’s Department of Health supported the project. Nguyen Van Chau, director of the department, said that the project would contribute to modernizing the city’s health care sector and coping with the chronic overload at the hospital.

VietNamNet/SGT