HCM CITY — HCM City has earmarked 665ha of land by 2020 to upgrade existing hospitals and build new facilities so that they can cope with the relentless overcrowding, according to its Department of Health.

The Tân Kiên Hospital Cluster in the outlying district of Bình Chánh gets 74ha now instead of the originally proposed 54ha.

It will have the 1,000-beds City Paediatrics Hospital, which opened this month and planned new facilities of the Blood Transfusion Haematology Hospital with 300 beds, Bình Dân Hospital with 300 beds, the Forensic Medicine Centre, and Phạm Ngọc Thạch Medical University. 

The department’s head, Nguyễn Tấn Bỉnh, told tuổi trẻ (Youth) newspaper that basic construction of the cluster is expected to be completed by 2020 though progress is slow because of problems related to land compensation and acquisition.

Besides treatment, the hospitals in the cluster would also provide training for personnel from hospitals in the city and the southern region, he added.

Dr Trần Vĩnh Hưng, Director of Bình Dân Hospital, said that with the increasing needs of patients, building a new facility at the hospital’s District 10 complex would be difficult.

It is a speciality hospital that does a lot of research into advanced techniques in treatment and also trains doctors from hospitals in the city and the southern region.

The cluster would help the hospital achieve this, Hưng said.

Dr Phù Chí Dũng, director of the Blood Transfusion Haematology Hospital, said patients would benefit greatly from the cluster, with his hospital too seeking to develop advanced techniques in the new facility.  

Several hospitals like the Heart Institute and Institute of Malariology and Parasitology are upgrading and building new facilities also at other locations.   

The Oncology Hospital, for instance, is building a facility in District 9 and will open it in December.

Moreover, the city has upgraded hospitals in the city’s all districts and 322 health stations in wards and communes.

HCM City attracts among the largest investment in the country from the private sector, and has more than 40 private hospitals and 200 general clinics.

The department is also assisting private health establishments especially with improving their human resources through beneficial new policies like allowing doctors at public hospitals to work part-time for them.

It publishes the ratings of these hospitals on its website to help people choose.

Last year the city had 40 beds and 17 doctors per 10,000 population.

The number of patients going to hospitals in the city increased last year to more than 42 million, accounting for 26.2 per cent of the country’s total number. —VNS