Project News

In the final year of the Project's implementation, the Project has a plan to develop and publish the Handbook on DOHA activities for the purposes of disseminating its achievements and experience to other provinces in nationwide. As important inputs for enriching the Handbook contents, the Project organized two study tours separately in April and May to visit several health facilities in the Southern region. The tours, in form of experience-sharing workshop and site observation, targeted to learn the actual situation of the DOHA/Referral activities in other areas of Vietnam.

The study tours were conducted with participation of the staffs from the relevant divisions of Provincial Department of Health, Provincial General Hospitals, Provincial Specialized Hospitals and District Hospitals including their leaders in 6 target provinces, accompanied by the members of Medical Service Department of Ministry Health (please see more detailed information as hereunder).

The destination hospitals in the Southern region of Vietnam are famous for their strong advocacy and go-ahead attempt to improve the quality of medical services. It is vital to focus on such important areas of activities as hospital quality management, nursing management, measures to nosocomial infection control and rehabilitation, etc. which are the cross-sectional common medical fields in different clinical departments for strengthening the regional medical service. Thus, these two study tours offered special opportunity for the participants from 6 provinces to create and strengthen valuable relationship with the Southern collegues and engaged them to brainstrom strategic plans with effective activities for further improvement of the medical services in their relevant departments and roles.

Taking this chance, a member of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) with specialization in physiotherapy who has been working as volunteer in Son La Provincial Rehalibitation Hospital participated in the study tour in May. She exchanged opinions with An Giang Provincial General Hospital and Tan Chau District Hospital which also have experience with JOCV for strengthening rehabilitation activities.

After this, the Project will summarize outputs and information as obtained during the study tours and integrate into the handbook for DOHA activities which is useful to other provinces.

[Schedule, participants and visiting place]

-Group I (19-23 April): Participants from Hoa Binh, Dien Bien and Lao Cai provinces visited Cho Ray hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Lon An Provincial and Ben Tre Provincial General Hospitals

-Group II (09-14 May): Participants from Son La, Lai Chau and Yen Bai provinces visited Can Tho city hospital, An Giang Provincial General Hospital, Tan Chau District Hospital in An Giang province and Tam Nong District Hospital in Dong Thap province

Cho Ray Hospital – Ho Chi Minh city

Observation and discussion in Can Tho city hospital

Meeting with leaders and staffs of Nguyen Dinh Chieu general hospital – Ben Tre province

An Giang provincial general hospital – An Giang province