Vietnamese Prime Minister has given the green light to project of building three hospitals in the gate into Ho Chi Minh City with total investment of VND5,600 billion ($240 million).

Three new infirmaries include the General Hospital Thu Duc, the General Hospital Hoc Mon and the General Hospital Cu Chi. Spending on the infirmaries will be taken from the city budget to improve healthcare services for city dwellers.

Director of the Department of Health Nguyen Tan Binh said the construction project of three hospitals is one of the health sector’s six major projects from now to 2020 with the vision to 2030.

Six major projects include to build five hospitals: City Children Hospital, Tumor Hospital, the General Hospital Hoc Mon, Cu Chi, Thu Duc, and Pham Ngoc Thach Medicine University Hospital. Amongst hospitals, only City Children Hospital was put into operation in 2017 and the Tumor Hospital will be put in use in 2019.

Around VND1,915 billion will be spent on Thu Duc general Hospital while VND1,895 billion and VND1,854 billion will be for building the General Hospital Hoc Mon and Cu Chi respectively.

The three 1,000-bed hospitals will be equipped with modern devices to help reduce patient overload in big hospitals in inner city and provide examination and treatment on residents in outlying districts and neighboring south east provinces.

For personnel preparation of the three infirmaries, Pham Ngoc Thach Medicine University has allowed to train more students who will work in clinics in districts. Moreover, medical workers in big hospitals will help their peers in newly-built hospitals and take turn to work in new hospitals in six months or one years.

After the City Children Hospital received patients, it has helped reducing patient overload for Children Hospital 1 and 2 especially in fighting hand-foot-mouth disease and other diseases.

Alongside with this, medical clinic system in districts work well. For years, People’s Committee has poured much investment in these clinics by building new facilities and repairing old ones. District clinics can treat normal diseases and some of them receive good response from patients.

Next time, Can Gio general Hospital and a hospital in district 12 are expected to put into operation and Nha Be hospital and hospital in district 2 will start the work later on. Moreover, hospitals in 24 districts citiwide will have more new wards to meet increasing demand of patients. It is expected grass-root hospitals will help fighting overload in big medical institutions by 2020.

SGGP