[ad_1]
Pham Hue Tom’s father died of most cancers a couple of weeks in the past.
Regardless of the terminal nature of his situation, she believes the loss of life was untimely for a wierd, painful cause – lack of morphine on the HCMC hospital that he was staying.
“His most cancers couldn’t be cured however the morphine might have eased the ache. He might have felt higher and been in a position to get pleasure from meals and lived longer,” she mentioned.
Tom, a resident of Dong Nai Province, had her father admitted to the Army Hospital 175 in neighboring HCMC.
The hospital used to offer most cancers sufferers two to a few morphine tablets a day for VND3,000-7,000 (13-30 U.S. cents) apiece. Later, it ran out of the tablets and sufferers’ households needed to search for them at personal hospitals or different locations that charged as much as VND150,000 a tablet.
“My household will not be that wealthy,” Tom mentioned.
Hospitals throughout Vietnam, not simply main cities like HCMC and Hanoi, have been hit by a extreme scarcity of medicines and medical tools in current months, delivering extra trauma than reduction to sufferers and their households.
Hue, who took care of her father on the Thai Binh Basic Hospital within the northern eponymous province, mentioned she was requested to purchase the whole lot outdoors, from needles to bandages, because the hospital didn’t have them.
“They requested me to go round and purchase from probably the most staple items. We (sufferers’ households) had been very upset about it.”
Hue mentioned the issue has been happening since early this 12 months. She had not encountered it final 12 months.
She lately transferred her father to Hanoi and needed to cope with the identical drawback.
“The hospital stored asking me to go to this and that middle for medication, the place they had been costlier.”
Hanoi’s Okay Hospital, a significant most cancers facility, has been asking sufferers to buy sure medical tools similar to catheters and IV needles on their very own.
The Dong Anh Basic Hospital within the eponymous Hanoi district lacks sure important chemical compounds and different organic merchandise. Due to this fact, it has to ship samples to different services to find out a affected person’s situation, even one thing like a myocardial infarction (coronary heart assault). It additionally lacks provides for much less invasive kidney stone elimination procedures.
In HCMC, which is coping with its most critical dengue fever outbreak in a few years, many hospitals now lack necessary medicines for treating the illness.
Nguyen Minh Tien, deputy director of the HCMC Kids’s Hospital, mentioned they’ve run out of Dextran transfusion fluid for dengue sufferers, and new provides are solely due in December.
In lots of circumstances, medical doctors have needed to resort to alternate options which can be much less efficient, or to some that aren’t coated by public medical health insurance, which means greater remedy prices for sufferers.
Dengue fever sufferers and their relations at HCMC Hospital for Tropical Ailments, June 2022. Photograph by VnExpress/Quynh Tran |
For the final three months, the Can Tho Basic Hospital within the Mekong Delta has been wanting completely different sorts of medication, together with these wanted for surgical procedures and particular therapies. These turn into very costly if sufferers have to purchase them at pharmacies or personal hospitals.
“We’re combating medical provides each day,” a hospital chief mentioned, including that the variety of sufferers coming to the hospital since early June has dropped 20-30 % from earlier months due to the present state of affairs.
The issue can also be widespread in Hau Giang Province which borders Can Tho.
For months, the province’s common hospital has lacked anticoagulants, antibiotics and medicines for hepatitis, most cancers, diabetes, hypertension and psychological well being issues.
“We’ve got been calling for donations and asking sufferers to purchase medicines which can be low cost on their very own. However the state of affairs may be very nerve-racking,” mentioned one other hospital chief who didn’t need to be named.
Below rules, the hospital must retailer sufficient medication for 2 to a few months, or value VND6-10 billion. However the worth of medicines on the hospital in early June was simply VND1 billion.
Bidding troubles
A number of well being officers and hospital leaders mentioned sophisticated bidding procedures and low monetary capability after two years of Covid-19 had been main causes for the poor medical provide state of affairs.
A Hanoi hospital consultant mentioned the scarcity was brought on by “sophisticated authorized bidding procedures.” Items should double-check the whole lot rigorously to ensure they do not break any legislation, slowing down the method significantly.
The Covid-19 pandemic has additionally plunged a number of hospitals into monetary difficulties, forcing them to curtail purchases. Since most medical provides are imported, the truth that companies haven’t absolutely recovered from the pandemic means provide chains usually are not functioning easily. Sure medication and different medical merchandise additionally require prolonged bidding processes.
Pham Khanh Phong Lan, Deputy Chairwoman of the Vietnamese Pharmaceutical Affiliation, mentioned present bidding rules require well being departments to seek out the most cost effective merchandise for public hospitals, which makes it exhausting for them to seek out provides or accept poorer high quality.
Lan prompt that the federal government removes the bidding requirement for generic medicines.
She mentioned: “Hospitals ought to be licensed to purchase their very own merchandise. Personal hospitals would not have to undergo a bidding course of.”
[ad_2]
Source link