In a move to help ease patient overloading at State-owned hospitals, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has asked the Prime Minister to allow it to use VND10 trillion (US$475.38) in a national budget package to build two new hospitals.

The amount is half of the VND20 trillion package earmarked for “construction of large hospitals of the regional level”. According to city authorities, the city needs to build two new health facilities: the HCMC Pediatrics Hospital and the HCMC Oncology Hospital in an effort to ease the ongoing serious patient overloading at Pediatrics Hospital I and II and the Oncology Hospital.    The two hospitals are part of the People’s Committee’s project to reduce patient overloading at State-owned hospitals in the city. Under the project, the new pediatrics hospital will be built on 12.5 hectares of land in Binh Chanh District, and the new oncology clinic will be located on 5.9 hectares of land in District 9. Each of the new hospitals will cost about VND5 trillion and will have 1,000 beds. The construction should be carried out under a special mechanism so that it can be completed and put into operation in 2015, the People’s Committee said. Currently, the Binh Chanh District People’s Committee is proceeding with site clearance and compensation related to 35 households so that the building of the new hospital can be started this month.  In District 9, 40 households, a school and a company are subject to relocation for the new oncology hospital. Site clearance, compensation and complaint settlement are all being stepped up by district authorities and the city’s inspectorate so that the land can be handed over to the new hospital’s investor as soon as possible.Three patients share a bed According to Tuoi Tre investigation, the HCMC Oncology Hospital, located at 3 No Trang Long Street in Binh Thanh District, has long been operating with too many patients, sometimes with three patients sharing a bed. The hospital has 631 beds, but the number of in-patients is more than 1,800 per day, hospital management explained.   Meanwhile, Pediatrics Hospital I, at 341 Sư Van Hanh, District 10, has 1,400 beds but it receives a much higher number of in-patients, resulting in an overload that affects service quality, and a rapid deterioration of facilities, equipment,  and environmental hygiene. The same situation is seen at the Pediatrics Hospital II, at 14 Ly Tu Trong, District 1, and these two hospitals often operate at 123 percent of their capacity, which means 100 beds for 123 sick child patients.