CẦN THƠ— The Department of Health in the Mekong Delta city of Cần Thơ this year plans to expand a model of family medical practice clinics to 27 more communes and wards.

Family medical practice clinics aim to provide comprehensive and continuous health care services to each local individual and family in order to reduce overcrowding of patients at city or central-level hospitals.

These clinics are located at health stations in communes and wards. Each commune or ward has one health station.

Cần Thơ aims to equip more than 80 per cent of its 85 health stations with these clinics by 2020.

According to Dr Bùi Thị Lệ Phi, the department’s head, the city now has 18 commune-based health stations with family medical practice clinics.

These clinics are managing the health of more than 117,000 residents.

However, they have not yet provided services such as hospice care, health consultation and screening for diseases because they have faced a shortage of health staff including doctors.

Residents there did not yet trust these clinics because they were not yet familiar with them, Dr Nguyễn Thị Thanh Thúy of the department told Tuổi Trẻ (Youth) newspaper.

Since 2015, all health stations in the city have met the national standards for health facilities in communes within period between 2011 to 2020, but several of them face a shortage of vital medical equipment.

The department every year organises walks to raise funds from private sectors to buy this equipment which have so far provided 96 devices for blood pressure monitors, 26 ultrasound machines, and other equipment in order to improve the quality of health examinations and treatment.

This year, the department will continue calling on various financial sources from private sectors to buy more medical equipment for health stations in communes and wards as well as towns in order to ensure they are able to provide basic health care services to local residents via family medical practice clinics, according to Phi.

Cần Thơ City is one of eight provinces and cities carrying out Project on Building and Developing Family Medical Practice Clinics within the period between 2013 and 2020.

The seven remaining provinces and cities in the project are Thái Nguyên, Thừa Thiên Huế, Khánh Hòa, Tiền Giang, Hà Nội, Hồ Chí Minh, and Hải Phòng. —VNS