Japan Finances $104M to Help Vietnam Build 10 Hospitals

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has provided Vietnam with $104 million to finance the construction of ten hospitals spread out across the country, according to information released by the Ministry of Health at its yearly review meeting on December 9. The ten hospital projects, costing total $120 million, have the remaining costs funded by the Ministry and local budgets. These are the Binh Dinh General Hospital, Lam Dong General Hospital, Ninh Thuan General Hospital, Nghe An Pediatrics Hospital, Danang C Hospital, Bac Giang General Hospital, Son Tay General Hospital, Nam Dinh Maternity Hospital, Tay Ninh General Hospital, and Thai Binh Pediatrics Hospital. To date, seven out of ten hospitals have completed the technical analysis and financial reports, which have been approved by JICA. The other three hospitals, located in the northern localities of Bac Giang and Son Tay and the central province of Binh Dinh, are striving to complete the reports and gain JICA approval in January 2016. The projects, in the second stage, have been implemented since mid-2012, with the main goal of providing the ten facilities with sufficient medical equipment and raising capacity of medical workers. The projects focus on improving the quality of surgery services, emergency and intensive care units, and sterilization. The medical facilities are expected to help ease the overload at central level hospitals in big cities. Vietnam has average seven doctors per 10,000 population and a total of 260,058 hospital beds, which means the bed availability rate is 28.1 beds/10,000 residents. (vietnamplus.vn Dec 9)