Last month, Lao Dong Newspaper mentioned that Can Tho City Oncology Hospital has only one Cobalt 60 radiotherapy machine, equipped and put into use 14 years ago. And currently, not only in the country but also in the whole world there are almost no places left to use them because they are too outdated.
Consequences: 300 cancer patients in the Mekong Delta region have been lining up to rely on this single radiotherapy machine, with a radiotherapy capacity of about 75 patients/day and night. This leads to a situation where there are patients living in Vinh Long who go to Can Tho to wait for radiotherapy... 4 months later, their turn still hasn't come.
We thought this was just an isolated "incident" at the local level, but it turns out it's not.
Latest at the high-tech radiotherapy area of K Hospital, Tan Trieu facility. Although there are up to 6 radiotherapy machines, the radiotherapy machine for patients with Health Insurance keeps "breaking down" and has been broken for many months, causing many patients to have to wait their turn. Those who cannot wait can "pay money" - about 4 million VND to be transferred to another machine - the machine is not insured.
And yet, even Viet Duc Friendship Hospital, one of the leading medical facilities in Hanoi, is currently facing a situation of insufficient medical equipment, causing patients to have to wait in line for surgery. .
Those who cannot wait and wish to have surgery soon must accept going to an outside pharmacy to buy supplies according to the doctor's instructions, "everything has to be bought, from bandages, elastics... it costs millions of money." ” as one patient told Lao Dong.
Overcrowding, lack of facilities, equipment, supplies, medicine... has been an incurable disease in the health sector for many years but there is still no effective cure.
In particular, there are many shortcomings related to the subjective factor of bidding, which is also an issue that has been raised for many years on the National Assembly forum with countless solutions and solutions proposed but still cannot be resolved completely.
This is a very difficult reality to accept in the context of the Vietnamese health sector always feeling "craving" and regretting the number that every year, Vietnamese people still spend 2 billion USD abroad for medical examination and treatment.
Therefore, the Ministry of Health recently had to target changes in budget allocation and investment to keep wealthy patients staying for treatment in the country, while attracting half a million foreigners to work in Vietnam. Using medical services in Vietnam...
These are very achievable goals, big things. But if you put aside "trivial" things like the "old-fashioned" radiotherapy machine in Can Tho or the overload, always lacking supplies and medicine, patients have to wait in line as seen in hospitals. From central to local level, it turned into a distant dream!
