HCM City seeks funds for new hospitals

Ho Chi Minh City has asked for the Prime Minister's permission to use funds from a 20 trillion VND (over 952 million USD) package to build a new paediatric hospital and an oncology hospital.
Ho Chi Minh City has asked for the Prime Minister's permission to use funds from a 20 trillion VND (over 952 million USD) package to build a new paediatric hospital and an oncology hospital.

The funding package has been allocated by the Government for building specialised hospitals in the southern region.

The municipal administration said the two hospitals are key facilities that need investment in order to ease patient overload at existing hospitals. The plan is to have the hospitals operational by 2015, it said.

The estimated cost of building the hospitals is 5 trillion VND (238 million USD) each.

Under the plan, the new paediatric hospital with 1,000 beds will be built on an area of nearly 12.5ha in Binh Chanh district and the new cancer hospital, also with 1,000 beds, will come up on a 5.6ha plot in district 9.

Work on the two hospitals was expected to start in the beginning of this year, but this has not happened because of ground clearance difficulties.

A report from the land clearance board in Binh Chanh district says the local administration is trying to provide compensation for 35 families affected by the project.

The oncology hospital is also stuck in ground clearance difficulties. The project would affect 40 families, one school and a business. The total area that the 40 families would have to be compensated for is 9,200 square metres.

The existing oncology hospital in Binh Thanh district is severely overloaded. The hospital has just 631 beds but the number of inpatients is around 1,800. Thus many patients have to share beds.

The Paediatric Hospital 1 in District 10 has 1,400 beds, but it has been experiencing overcrowding for the last two years.

The hospital admits and treats nearly 1.7 million children each year.

The Paediatric Hospital 2 in District 1, which also has 1,400 beds, is also suffering from overcrowding. The hospital examines nearly 1.4 million children each year, of whom more than one million are admitted for treatment.-VNA

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