VietNamNet Bridge – Around 40,000 Vietnamese go abroad for medical treatment annually. They pay more than $1 billion for the services, but many of them spend money and only get worse.

 

Expensive services

 

Overseas treatment services have been advertised loudly in Vietnam. Many hospitals in Thailand and Singapore have opened their representative offices in Vietnam to advertise their services.

 

In HCM City, meetings with doctors from Thailand and Singapore are held very often. After consultation on fatal diseases like cancers, cardiovascular, etc. organizers always advertise overseas treatment services at modern hospitals, where almost all fatal diseases can be cured.

 

“The requirement for high-quality medical treatment of Vietnamese is rising, so many foreign hospitals have opened their representative offices in Vietnam,” said a doctor from the HCM City Cancer and Turmor Hospital.

 

The doctor said that the hospital has at least 500 patients going abroad for medical treatment a year.

 

The representative of a Bangkok-based hospital in HCM City said, that since 2000, around 5,000 Vietnamese patients have been cured at his hospital in Bangkok.

 

Some Thai hospitals advertise that they offer luxurious hotels for foreign patients in Bangkok, and also helicopter service from Vietnam to Thailand. Patients will be treated like gods. However, the services are priced from several thousands to hundreds of thousands of USD.

 

Some foreign-funded clinics in Hanoi and HCM City have offered packaged transport services for Vietnamese patients from Vietnam to foreign hospitals by air. Patients will be taken care by hospitals during the flight.

 

This service charge is up to $50,000/flight, but it is sold well. An employee of a HCM City-based clinic said that her clinic transports 100-150 Vietnamese patients to foreign hospitals, mainly in Singapore and the US.

 

Some Vietnamese hospitals, for example FV Hospital, have cooperated with foreign hospitals to bring Vietnamese patients overseas and take care of them in Vietnam after surgery.

 

Several Australian firms provide specialized aircraft to transport patients from Vietnam to Australia for emergency aid, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars/trip.

 

Running out of money for overseas treatment

 

After seeing two acquaintances who were successfully treated in Singapore, Hoai Anh, 42 from Go Vap district, HCM City, decided to bring his son to Singapore for medical treatment, at the price of SG$30,000.

 

“She and her husband are teachers, so they had to borrow money from relatives of both sides to bring her son to Singapore. They have only one son!” Hoai Anh’s mother,Mrs. Hoa,said.

 

According to representative offices of foreign hospitals in Vietnam, a kidney transplant surgery in Thailand or Singapore is priced from $30,000 to $50,000. In Vietnam, the cost for a kidney transplant surgery totals only VND80 million ($4,000). Though who have health insurance, have to pay only VND60 million ($3,000).

 

Nearly three years after her husband returned from a hospital in Thailand, Hai Yen, 46, from District 7, HCM City has not paid out her debt.

 

“My husband was detected with marrow trouble at a local hospital three years ago. I brought him to Thailand for treatment. The cost for treatment was more than $50,000, plus thousands of USD for accommodations and traveling,” Yen said.

 

Yen’s two-story house on Huynh Tan Phat road, District 7 is now mortgaged to a bank, while her husband’s disease is not cured yet.

 

Some of Yen’s friends also went overseas for treatment. A man named Ha in District 3, HCM City, was diagnosed with kidney failure. Ha neglected the kidney transplant service at HCM City’s Cho Ray hospital to go to a Singaporean hospital in according to advertisement of its representative office in Vietnam. The man was very disappointed, because the Singaporean hospital is similar to a Vietnamese hospital. However, he paid over $3,000 for the trip and $2,000 for tests, so he had to maintain the service.

 

PV