By submitting an ID card and portrait photo and paying VND160,000 (US$7.54) as a “fee”, anybody could buy a medical certificate at a district health center in central Vietnam’s Quang Binh province without undergoing any real checkup.

>> 10 indicted for issuing false test results to patients >> Hospital issues same test results to 2,000 patients >> Issuers of 1,500 false blood test results get minor sentences Mai Quy Khiem, former chairman of the People’s Committee of Quang Trach District, Quang Binh Province has sent a letter of denunciation to the provincial Health Department accusing Pham Minh Son, director of the district Preventive Health Center of selling checkup reports. Khiem is the father-in-law of the head of the Epidemic Control Department under that center. Over the past several years, Son had directed doctors and medical technicians at the center to randomly sign thousands of such reports, the accusation letter wrote. Son himself signed X-ray scan reports although he is not a radiologist, Khiem said in the letter. All these false checkup reports were signed by Son and fixed with the center’s seal. A report was sold for VND160,000, and those who buy it in bulk will enjoy a lower price of VND120,000,  according to the accusation. Contacted by Tuoi Tre reporters, many doctors and technicians at the center said they only put their signatures and names on the reports, while others would fill them out with positive comments in each health section. A doctor said, “Mr. Son told us that this is a common duty and if it is considered wrong, he will be held responsible to the provincial health department”. Khiem said that the center has sold thousands of medical checkup reports to vocational training centers in Quang Trach and Tuyen Hoa Districts.Report issued to the dead In March 2014, Khiem borrowed an ID card of a man who died eight years ago and had a motorbike taxi driver take the paper to the center and show it to health workers there to buy a checkup report. Five minutes after receiving the ID card, a 4 x 6 photo, and a “fee” of VND160,000, the center’s staffers issued a medical certificate for this long-dead man. Like in other reports, this one concludes that the health conditions of the (dead) man is good enough for him to engage in studies at school or get a job.Not for profit? It is true that the center has sold medical checkup reports, under Son’s direction, to people, and this is wrong, Nguyen Duc Cuong, director of the provincial Health Department said. In talking with Tuoi Tre, Son said he admitted that he signed and fixed the center seal on false checkup reports, but he said this was done not for the purpose of earning illegal income. “Issuing such reports is to create good conditions for our staffs and to maintain good relations with the district Party Committee and People’s Committee,” Son claimed.Accuser relies on tipoff from ‘dishonest insider’? On October 3, the provincial Health Department summoned Dr. Hoang Thanh Binh, head of the Epidemic Control Department under the above preventive health center, to the department’s office for a meeting to clarify the accusation from Khiem, Binh’s father-in-law. At the meeting, Binh said Son directed him to put his signature on four sections of the checkup report, comprising cardiovascular system, respiration, digestion, and nephro-urology. “After I signed them, such reports would be photocopied to hundreds, even thousands, of copies… I have many times advised Son not to do so, but he lost his temper and threatened to sack me,” Binh said. Meanwhile, Truong Dinh Dinh, deputy director of the provincial Health Department, and head of the team charged with verifying the accusation, said that Binh “lacked honesty” and threatened to suspend Binh’s ongoing studies at the Hue Medicine and Pharmacy University. Binh had provided information and evidence for his father-in-law to be used to make the accusation that put the provincial’s health sector to shame, Dinh said.

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