Military Hospital 103, the given name of Hospital 103, is not only the first-rank unit of the army and the country in the field of clinical and pre-clinical trainings for graduate and post-graduate  students but also a vanguard unit in the field of organ transplant.

With  successful organ transplants, it has helped Vietnam take huge steps of development, on par with the advanced medicine of the region and the world.

Team 3 was made into Military Hospital 103  with a decision made by the General Department of Logistics. In December 1958, the Ministry of Defense decided to transfer  Military Hospital 103 from the management of the Military Medicine Department ( the General Department of Logistics) to the Military Medical Officers’ School.

On May 21, 1989, the General Staff issued a decision, recognising Military Hospital 103 as the first-grade hospital of the army and in 1995, the Military Hospital was renamed Hospital 103.

With its early functions and tasks of clinical and pre-clinical trainings for Vietnamese medical and pharmaceutical graduate and post-graduate students, Hospital 103 has, so far turned out 22,000 physicians and pharmacists.

650 of them are doctors of medicine and 1,800 are masters of medicine, 4,200 are medical officers of speciality I and II, and 10,000 are officers of orientation speciality.

Each year, the Hospital has 60 classes on average with nearly 2,000 students for the Vietnamese medicine sector in general and the military medicine section in particular.

The hospital is not only recording prominent achievements in training but is also one of the units taking the lead in scientific research.

The research has constituted not only important contributions to training activities but also premises for the successful performance of historic organ transplants, having recently created big repercussions for the Vietnamese organ transplant field.

Four historic organ transplants of  great importance for Vietnam’s organ transplant sector were successfully performed at the hospital: The first kidney transplant in Vietnam in 1992; the first liver transplant in 2006; the first heart transplant in 2010 and the first poly-organ (pancreas- kidney) transplant in March 2014.

After more than 20 years from the first successful organ transplant at Hospital 103, Vietnam’s organ transplant sector has strongly developed to 12 hospitals and medical establishments nationwide.

Though thought of as being behind by the rest of the world for almost a half century and regional countries for some 20 years, it has advanced to the regional level.

Organ transplant has been one of the most prominent achievements of Vietnamese medicine.

It is attributed to the great contributions of the contingent of doctors and assistant- doctors of Hospital 103 through different periods.

Since the first successful organ transplant, the hospital has, so far, performed 70 organ transplants, including 19 cases in the past 10 months.

In 2017, Hospital 103 will complete a new medical examination and treatment quarter, which is being designed by German architects and built under European hospitals’ standards, with modern equipment and machines and a number of helicopter pads on the roofs of the building.

The investment in its synchronous infrastructure tells of the hospital’s important role and position in combining its two tasks: training and therapy.

This has also become the motivating force for the contingent of doctors and assistant doctors to carry on its glorious  65 year-old history of growth and development.

With its outstanding contributions to Vietnamese medicine, on December 17, 2015 at the 65th founding anniversary (December 20, 1950- December 12, 2015), Military Hospital 103 was conferred by the Party and the State the noble award of Ho Chi Minh Order.

Hospital 103’s doctors and assistant doctors performing an organ transplant. Photo: File     General Phung Quang Thanh, Minister of Defense, visiting patient Pham Thai Huyen,  for whom the first historic pancreas-kidney transplant was carried out in 2014.   The hospital’s Kidney Failure Treatment Department equipped with dozens of modern machines for treatment.   The hospital’s Stroke Department, where thousands of patients are treated annually.   A patient being given cancer treatment at the X-ray Accelerator Department of the Hospital’s Oncology Center.   The hospital’s two Spect rooms in service of cancer diagnosis.   Spect rooms furnished with the most modern equipment for cancer diagnosis.   The hospital’s bio-chemical laboratory with 4 bio-chemical machines and 2 testers operating constantly testing, diagnosing and treating.   Students of the Military Medicine Academy at the hospital.   The hospital annually organises more than 60 classes for over 2,000 trainees from the Military Medicine Academy.

VNP