State-owned hospitals in Vietnam have come up with a surprising idea to deliver their promise to stop bed-sharing among in-patients: either arranging more beds along the corridors or discharging patients early.
Tuoi Tre
(Youth) newspaper reporters have visited such hospitals in the hope of witnessing changes as they had pledged that there would be no more bed-sharing.
In a meeting with Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien around two months ago, many state-owned hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, which have been the hot spots of overloaded infirmaries, promised to provide enough facilities and beds for in-patients within 48 hours of admission.
Twenty-eight out of 54 state-owned infirmaries in Ho Chi Minh City and 20 out of 38 central hospitals in Hanoi gave the minister their word.
Their commitment means that two or more in-patients would no longer have to share a bed.
At Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi, in-patients are not sharing a bed but they have to lie on those placed along the corridors.
On March 27, around 20 such beds were put on both sides of the corridors of the trauma department of the infirmary.
It caused much inconvenience to walk from ward to ward, according to what the Tuoi Tre reporters observed.
Medicines and other tools were seen put on doorsills that made it look like an improvised combat hospital.
A relative of a patient said that it is better for in-patients to lie on different beds but the sight does not look so clean along the corridors.
The National Hospital of Pediatrics in Hanoi is another venue infamous for overloading. During a measles breakout last year, it was a common sight that three or four child patients shared a bed.
The Tuoi Tre reporters could see neither bed-sharing nor any bed along the corridors on their visit to this hospital.
It turns out that the management has solved overloading issues by discharging in-patients early, according to such patients and their relatives.
Lu Thi Phong, 29 from the northern province of Hoa Binh, said her child was hospitalized on the evening of March 17 but discharged the following morning.
She asked for her child to remain there on seeing that the kid was still sick, just to get her plea turned down.
Hospital doctors gave the kid a follow-up examination three days later.
Nguyen Thi Nam from the northern province of Phu Tho recounted that her child still could not get rid of his respiratory disease because he was discharged from the hospital early.
Nam added that the kid was admitted into the infirmary several times already.
According to the Ministry of Health, hospital overcrowding can be relieved when the nation has an average of 25-27 beds for every 10,000 people.
The ratio now is over 20 beds per 10,000 residents.
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