U.S. visa processing slower than usual

The U.S. visa processing is being tardy due to technical problems affecting operations globally, so those planning to enter the U.S. are advised to postpone final travel arrangements until they obtain a visa.

David McCawley, Countrywide Consular Coordinator at the U.S. Consulate General in HCMC, offered the advice in a statement released on July 28.

The visa system of the U.S. Department of State has run into technical problems, including outages since July 19, resulting in a backlog of visa applications worldwide.

Though the Department of State has tried to fix the problems, the visa processing is still experiencing delays. The ability to print visas is restored and the department is prioritizing immigrant visas.

Those planning to travel to the U.S. should apply for a visa at least a few weeks prior to the anticipated departure dates.

VNA makes emergency landing due to passenger’s health risk

A Vietnam Airlines plane en route from Hanoi to Paris had to make an emergency landing in Germany’s Frankfurt on July 28 after a 44-year-old passenger lost consciousness.

Nguyen Thi Huong, fainted two hours before the flight’s expected arrival in Paris, said VNA.

After looking for voluntary medical assistance on board, the cabin crew decided to ask for permission to make an emergency landing at Frankfurt Airport.

Representatives of VNA, cooperating with Frankfurt Airport authorities, brought the passenger who has a history of high-blood pressure to the nearest medical center. Her husband and a friend of hers accompanying her on the flight were also supported by VNA to stay with her in Frankfurt.

Afterwards, the flight continued its journey at 8:12 a.m. and arrived in Paris at 9:08 a.m. (local time).

Binh Loi railway bridge to break ground in October

Construction of the Binh Loi railway bridge spanning the Saigon River is scheduled to begin in October this year and be complete within 15 months.

The Ministry of Transport has urged Transport Investment and Construction Consultant Joint Stock Company, the consultant of the project, to finalize a construction plan in the middle of next month in preparation for work to start on time.

The consulting firm proposed five plans to upgrade the Binh Loi Bridge. Accordingly, plan 1A is to upgrade and convert the existing Binh Loi Bridge into a swing bridge and the bridge is to be upgraded and lifted up partly or wholly as envisaged in plans 1B and 1C.

The remaining two plans are to construct a new bridge but the location of the existing Binh Trieu Railway Station will remain unchanged or be relocated.

A source from the ministry told the Daily that most participants at a meeting in mid-July opted for Plan 2A as building a new Binh Loi railway bridge without relocation of the current

Binh Trieu Railway Station matches a project to develop Trang Bom-Hoa Hung railway project and is in line with the zoning plan of HCMC.

The 110-year Binh Loi Bridge has deteriorated. As its vertical clearance is only 1.8 meters, boats often get stuck under the bridge when there are high tides, threatening the safety of train traffic on the bridge.

The authorities of HCMC have called for the transport ministry to prioritize funding for the construction of a new railway bridge over the Saigon River to replace the current structure.

The Binh Loi railway bridge is the most important section of Trang Bom-Hoa Hung railway line connecting with the Saigon Railway Station in this economic hub of Vietnam.

Warehouse fire causes $4.7m in damage

A fire in a warehouse of a packaging company in the southern province of Long An's Tan An City yesterday, destroyed property and goods worth VND100 billion (US$4.7 million).

The 3,000-square metre warehouse was completely destroyed. It took fire fighters two hours to douse the fire.

The case is under investigation.

Train accident kills one in Nam Dinh

One person died after being hit by a passenger train in the northern Nam Dinh Province's Vu Ban District yesterday.

The accident occurred when the victim was crossing the track and did not see the oncoming train, according to eyewitnesses.

The case is under investigation.

Bach Mai Hospital opens Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Centre

The Viet Nam - Japan Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Centre opens today at the Bach Mai General Hospital as one of the most advanced medical centres in the north of Viet Nam.

The centre was part of a co-operation project between the hospital and the Nagoya University in Japan with a support of the Ministry of Economic, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI).

Under the framework of the project, METI has provided a fund of US$1 million to equip the centre with advanced endoscopy facilities. The hospital staff will be sent to Japan for training and transferring of medical techniques.

As the biggest hospital in the north, Bach Mai has treated over 1.4 million patients yearly, including 120,000 in-patients.

Flood control exercise held in central Vietnam

Authorities in Quang Tri Province conducted a flood control and rescue exercise on July 28 to be better prepared for the storm season.

The exercise was held in Chi Lang District with the participation of more than 1,000 officials and employees of the armed forces and medical teams from all localities of Quang Tri Province. The scenario was a large storm that had a path through the central region, directly provinces from Quang Binh to Thua Thien Hue.

The exercise took place in the communes of Hai An, Hai Son and Hai Tan, which are often affected by strong storms due to their flat terrain and proximity to the sea.

Teams practiced moving boats to the shelters, reinforcing homes, establishing underground shelters, evacuating buildings and giving first aid. Along the O Giang and O Lau rivers, a scenario was envisioned in which the water level rose, flooding residential areas.

Colonel Nguyen Van Thanh, head of Military Command of Hai Lang District, said, "The exercise is meant to train our forces to deal with heavy storms. Citizens have also been taught basic skills to keep them safe should a natural disaster strike."

HCM City youth launch volunteer campaign in Laos

The Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday  launched a volunteer campaign to Laos in this summer.

Nearly 70 students from city universities, colleges registered to participate in the campaign with many volunteer activities such as providing  free health check and medicines for poor people, helping households to repair houses, carrying out cultural exchange programs...

The mission aims to tighten friendship, solidarity between Laos and Vietnam.

At the launching ceremony of the campaign young volunteers offered flowers at the Statue of President Ho Chi Minh. City leaders encouraged the volunteers  to complete their mission.

The launching ceremony was attended by Head of the HCMC Party Committee’s Public Relations Nguyen Van Ranh, Deputy Consul General of Laos in Ho Chi Minh City Somxayphone Thipphavong.

The campaign is expected to last to August 9.

In the related news, within the framework of the cultural exchange festival for children of three neighboring countries from July 28-31, a meeting between leaders of the city Party Committee, People’s Committee with children in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was held at city's Youth Communist Union' headquarter yesterday.

At the meeting, Deputy Secretary of the HCMC Party Committee Nguyen Thi Thu Ha said that the children had an opportunity not only to tighten international friendship, solidarity but also introduce the historical, cultural values of the three countries through the festival.

Minimum wage not enough

The current minimum wage meets barely 75 per cent of the minimum living standard, said Nguyen Tien Dang, head of the Salary Department under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), at a labour conference in Ha Noi yesterday.

Wage negotiation mechanisms remained limited, so many enterprises forced their staff to accept low pay, Dang said. Moreover, the separation of wages by region led to confusion for areas on the border between regions, making implementation difficult.

The minimum wage currently ranges from VND1.9-2.7 million (over US$90-130).

However, Dang said the National Salary Committee aimed to raise the minimum wage gradually until it met the minimum living standard of workers while remaining within enterprises' payment capacity. The authorities also supported the signing of collective labour agreements in some industries so that minimum wages for those industries could be set, a mechanism that has already been piloted by the textile and rubber industries.

He also recommended that regulations dictating hourly and daily minimum wages be put in place to protect those engaging in part-time work.

Mai Duc Thien, deputy director of MoLISA's Legal Department, reminded participants that the Labour Code already set out basic minimum wage regulations.

Specifically, the code stipulated that minimum wage negotiations must include representatives of the Government as well as employers and employees and that wages should be sufficient to meet the minimum living standard.

State officials said that a Law on Minimum Wage would be added to the law development agenda of the National Assembly in 2016.

Doctors urge adult cancer checks

Local and international medical officials in HCM City are recommending that people 40 years old and above get screening tests for the most common kinds of cancer.

From 2007 to 2011, hospitals and wards specialising in oncology treated 33,126 cancer cases, according to a study conducted by doctors at the HCM City Oncology Hospital.

In males, the five leading cancers in Viet Nam were lung, liver, colon and rectum, stomach and nasopharynx. For females, they were cancers of the breast, cervix uteri, colon and rectum, lung and thyroid, the study found.

Speaking at a workshop held last Saturday by the City International Hospital, Dr Patricia Kho, senior consultant on medical oncology at Singapore's Gleneagles Hospital, said that screening programmes helped detect cancers early and that cancer could develop without symptoms.

Sreening programmes for cancers of the breast, liver, cervix uteri, colon and rectum are regularly carried out at hospitals worldwide, she said.

Women who get the vaccine against human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer, should continue to be screened because the vaccine does not protect against all kinds of human papillomavirus, she said.

Females aged 9 to 26 are eligible for the vaccine. Three shots within six months should be done.

Dr Esther Chuwa, breast surgeon at Gleneagles Hospital, said that health education on clinical breast examination to detect cancer should be improved.

With better screening and diagnostic tests as well as combination therapy, the survival rate of first-stage breast cancer has increased, according to a study of 130 patients from January 2008 to December 2009 conducted by doctors of the HCM City Oncology Hospital.

The assessment showed that there was no difference in the quality of life between disease-free breast cancer survivors and healthy women of the same age.

At least 150,000 new diagnoses of cancer are made each year in the country, and 75,000 people who have cancer die annually, according to the Ha Noi Cancer Association.

The GLOBOCAN 2012, an annual report written by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organisation, showed that globally there were an estimated 14.1 million new cancer cases and 8.2 million fatalities caused by cancers in 2012.

The number increased from 12.7 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer-related mortalities in 2008.

Hospitals under scrutiny

The Ha Noi Department of Health will conduct consecutive inspections at five district-level hospitals across the city this week after the city-based Thuong Tin hospital was caught using a medical machine without documents to prove its origin.

The move followed an inspection on Sunday by inspectors and officials from the municipal Department of Health, Department of Environmental Police and Thuong Tin District Police found that an automated biochemical analyser had been borrowed from an outside company.

The hospital borrowed the Hitachi 717 biochemical analyser from the Dong Da-based Phu Cuong An Co., Ltd due to lack of equipment in the hospital, said hospital Deputy Director Pham Hoang Anh.

The hospital's laboratory has three biochemal analysers, including one that is broken, a Greiner GA240 installed by the Department of Health, and the borrowed Hitachi 717.

The laboratory conducted an average of 150 to 200 tests per day. The Hitachi 717 was used for about 90 per cent of total tests.

The Hitachi analyser is long out of production and has been placed on Viet Nam's list of prohibited imports.

The Department of Health fined the hospital VND30 million (US$1,450) and ordered the machine be destroyed.

Thuong Tin hospital not only borrowed the machine but also purchased VND1.2 billion (US$57,700) worth of analysing chemicals from Phu Cuong An company.

Department of Health Director Nguyen Khac Hien said the hospital might have deliberately hidden its broken machine from the Department to hire another one and shared the commission from chemical purchases.

"We will have a meeting this week to clarify the responsibilities of the hospital's leaders," he said.

Another biochemical analyser in the laboratory, a German-made Greiner GA240 was given to the hospital by the Department of Health. It was found to have three cooling fans and five motors made in China.

The machine only provides 38 test results in two-and-a-half hours while it is expected to handle 180 in one hour.

"The appearances of third-country labels does not mean that the quality of the machine is lower. All of the sub-parts produced in the third country still have to meet German standards. Our machines have proper documents to prove their origins," said the Mineral Import and Export Joint Stock Co. CEO Tran Thi Lan Anh.

The company was given the biochemical analysers in bidding package number four of the Department of Health to advance the medical equipment at district-level hospitals.

The VND30 billion (US$1.45 million) package provided equipment for district-level hospitals including Son Tay, Van Dinh, Quoc Oai, Chuong My, Hoai Duc, Thanh Oai, My Duc, Thach That, Phu Xuyen and Thuong Tin.

Intel markets first ‘Made-in-Vietnam’ CPU Haswell

Intel Products Vietnam on July 29 launched its first CPU Haswell manufactured at HCM City-based assembly and testing plant.

The plant is not only the first semiconductor facility in Vietnam but manufactures Intel’s central processing units (CPU) with the brand Haswell expecting to account for 80% of the global market share.

Intel announced the release of CPU Haswell made in Vietnam on July 29 (Photo:VGP)

Sherry Boger, General Manager of Intel Products Vietnam, said the Haswell debut was an event of great significance for Intel, and the HCM City plant is on track to meet its set targets, contributing to the group’s assembly and testing capacity globally.

Vietnam is currently an attractive investment destination for foreign businesses, including Intel in particular, she said, adding Intel has received great support from relevant Vietnamese agencies since the project got off the ground.

Intel Products Vietnam was initially designed to manufacture chipsets for laptops and mobile devices. It later launched Atom SoC (System on a Chip) in late 2013 and now CPU Haswell.

US, Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange meet

Representatives of the second and third generations of Agent Orange (AO) victims from Vietnam and the United States met in Hanoi on July 29.

They discussed experience in raising public awareness of AO/dioxin and calling for more support for victims.

The Chairman of the Vietnam Association for Victims of AO/Dioxin (VAVA), Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Rinh, said he hopes representatives of the second and third generations in the two countries will become a bridge connecting victims and international organisations.

The head of the US delegation, Heather Bowser, said she felt the pain left by this toxic chemicals after visiting affected areas in Vietnam.

She hoped that the two sides will continue linking victims to fight against chemical warfare.

The US delegation is visiting Vietnam from July 28-August 7.

About 80 million litres of herbicides, mainly AO containing dioxin, were sprayed over South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Nearly 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to dioxin and about three million suffer from health problems today.

Vietnam-Japan digestive endoscopy centre inaugurated

A Vietnam - Japan digestive endoscopy centre was put into operation at Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital on July 29.

According to Associate Professor Nguyen Quoc Anh, Director of Bach Mai Hospital, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry provided an US$1million endoscopy equipment for the centre.

The hospital’s doctors have been sent to Japan for study, he said, adding that the Japanese side has also dispatched experts to Vietnam for training and technological transfer.

On the occasion, a symposium on digestion was held for Japanese experts and Vietnamese doctors to share experience.

As the biggest hospital in the north, Bach Mai receives and treats over 1.3 million outpatients and 120,000 inpatients per year.

Conference looks at gender-based wage gap

The wage gap between female and male workers attracted attention of participants at a conference held in Hanoi on July 29 by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) and the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID).

According to a joint survey by the MOLISA and the AECID on discrimination in wage and income of labourers in the 2006-2012 period, women workers were paid just 83 percent of what their men counterparts received on an average basis. In 2012, the monthly wage of women averaged 3.2 million VND compared to 3.855 million VND for men.

In almost all economic sectors, the average monthly wage of women workers was lower than that of men workers, except for the private sector, said the study.

The greatest gap was recorded in the foreign-invested sector in which women workers’ wage was only half of men workers’.

Participants at the conference were of the view that social traditions and prejudice against women have hindered women from accessing education opportunities and employment choices as well as skill improvement.

In addition, social preconception has led to the thinking that working productivity of women is lower than that of men, resulting in the discrimination in payment, they said.

They also called on ministries and sectors to promote women’s access to education as well as create favourable conditions for them to pursuit higher education and professional training, in order to increase their income.

At the same time, ministries and sectors should apply more support policies to encourage women’s greater engagement in different economic sectors and advancement in their career, they suggested.

The July 29 conference also looked at international labour standards on wage and income, the national legal framework on wage and income and key orientations in building a draft law on minimum wage in Vietnam.

Measures taken to ensure safety for Vietnamese workers in Libya

Vietnam has taken measures to ensure safety for its guest workers in Libya amid escalating violence in this riot-stricken nation.

Nguyen Ngoc Quynh, head of the Vietnamese Overseas Workers Management Department under the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, said that since the situation in Libya began to show signs of instability at the beginning of July, the ministry has kept close contact with the Vietnamese embassy and labourers in the country.

At present, all workers have been informed of the situation and evacuation plans if necessary. Those living near conflict areas are asked not to go out and provided with food and necessities.

According to Quynh, there are about 1,750 Vietnamese workers in Libya, of whom more than 200 are living in Tripoli and Bengazi – two unrest-stricken cities.

On July 29, Nguyen Duc Nam, deputy director general of the International Manpower Supply and Trade Company (SONA), said that his company sent over 500 Vietnamese workers to Libya, of whom 200 workers employed by a Turkish corporation have been moved to Turkey by their employer. He added that among these workers, 79 were expected to come back to Vietnam by air on July 29. The remaining will be sent back to Vietnam later or arranged to work in other projects. According to Nam, the Turkish partner pledged to receive these workers back when it resumes the project in Libya.

Three years ago, more than 10,000 Vietnamese workers in Libya also had to evacuate when war broke out in the country.

Vietnam resumed sending its workers to the African country after the situation in Libya turned to normal in 2012.

Poor education both in official channels and in family is a major cause of the rising teenage abortions, which now account for more than 20 percent of the total number of abortions in Vietnam, according to the General Office for Population and Family Planning.

According to a survey conducted by the Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population (CCIHP) at two junior high schools in Hanoi early this year, 60 percent of nearly 250 interviewed students said their parents did not make any discussions of gender and reproductive health matters with them within the past year, while 14 percent said their parents have never even mentioned the issues.

Most of the parents hesitated or avoided questions from children about sexual matters, resulting in adolescent unintended pregnancies and abortions.

A lack of gender knowledge also exposes young people to a high risk of sexual abuse and psychological disorders.

At the same time, the Office said the number of abortions has been declining over the past decade.

Intel’s contributions to HCM City development hailed

Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Le Thanh Hai has said that Intel Products Vietnam Co. Ltd’s effective investment has greatly contributed to the city’s socio-economic development, especially in training high-quality human resources.

Meeting with Intel Products Vietnam General Manager Sherry Boger on July 29 on the occasion of the debut of the company’s first central processing unit (CPU) product in Vietnam , Hai spoke highly of Intel’s efforts to overcome initial difficulties to realise cooperation commitments between the two sides.

He proposed that Intel raise its investment in the Saigon Hi-tech Park, focusing on the field of research and development.

For her part, Sherry Boger thanked the municipal authorities for creating favourable conditions for the company to turn out hi-tech products in Vietnam.

In the next six months, Intel plans to have over 80 percent of its CPUs made in Vietnam provided for the world market, she stated.

Earlier on the day, Intel Products Vietnam Co. Ltd, an affiliate of the US-based Intel Corporation, launched its first central processing unit (CPU) product manufactured at the Saigon Hi-tech Park.

The company had invested more than 450 million USD in this product, which uses the most sophisticated technology.-

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