Khanh Hoa Healthcare: Determined to Provide Better Services

To affirm the role in the integration trend, the Health Department of Khanh Hoa province pays attention to its management process and boosts the sci-tech application to enhance competitiveness. As of late September this year, the province had 215 health centres managed by the provincial Health Department, including five hospitals, two departments and 13 other preventive units. Local districts have 41 medical units, including eight general hospitals, meanwhile, communes and wards have 140 health stations, including three in Truong Sa Island district.

 

The province now has 537 private health centres, including five general clinics, 319 specialised clinics, 121 medical services and 208 traditional medicine centres. The network contributes to meeting medical check-up and treatment demand of local people. The province has focused on investment in healthcare services. Capacity of sick-bed use reaches 98 – 130 percent. Medical check-up and treatment at all health stations are improved, particularly in communes and wards. Hospitals apply new techniques to enhance treatment quality. The provincial general hospital is installed with equipment like scanning machines, lithotripter, mammography, 3-D ultrasound, C/Am and Holter monitor. Many hospitals in the province were provided with new equipment like pressure Helter, ECG and Oxymeter. District-level hospitals are also installed with some equipment, including scanning machines and automatic testing machines. Therefore, hospitals are able to conduct surgeries for patients suffering from brain tumor, brain abscess and hydrocephalus.

 

Along with improvement and completion of the health system, enhancing capacity of the contingent of local medical staffs has been also concentrated on. Khanh Hoa has so far 3,207 health cadres, including six doctors, 137 masters, 16 specialised doctors of grade II and 248 of grade I. The locality’s rate doctor for every 10,000 people is 6.22. The province has 24 pharmacists who have university degrees, including one master and 11 specialized degrees of grade I. Health stations in communes and wards have 775 cadres. Up to 95 percent of local villages have medical cadres. The province targets that all of its health stations will have doctors with an average rate of 5.6 cadres per station.

Minh noted that the Khanh Hoa health sector sees great potentials but it is also faces difficulties. The biggest difficulty is the shortage of medical cadres. Salary and subsidy for health cadres remain modest, particularly for preventive health staffs. However, these achievements have provided a firm foundations for the provincial health sector to overcome challenges and deal with disease prevention and healthcare service supply, contributing to the nation’s industrialisation and modernisation.

 

From now to 2015 and a vision until 2020, the province’s Health Department will continue prioritising investment sources to upgrade medical centres in communes, wards and towns, particularly in remote and island localities. All communes in the province are aimed to meet national standards by 2010. The provincial health sector will upgrade the local General Hospital into the region-level hospital which has 1,000 sick-beds by 2010 and a vision for further development through 2020. It will seek funds from non-governmental organisations for health prevention, health community, Rota virus project and HIV/AIDS prevention projects.