Vietnam ministry inspects French hospital
Inspectors from Vietnam’s health ministry began to work Friday with a Hanoi-based French hospital after a woman complained of her husband’s careless treatment that worsened his health.
The ministry asked the L'Hôpital Français de Hanoi, which is 100 percent French-owned, to “do their best to invite top national experts to diagnose and treat” 79-year-old Ramio Jean.
His clinical records must be written in both French and Vietnamese and explained carefully, the ministry instructed.
The hospital brushed off responsibility, claiming his deteriorating health condition was due to his age and a series of diseases he has contracted including cirrhosis, a prostate tumor and brain shrinkage.
Lax treatment
The inspection came after his wife, Pham Thi Hong Phuong sent letters Wednesday to the ministry and media.
She said her husband was admitted early last month to the hospital where doctors diagnosed “gallstones” in his gallbladder and said he needed immediate surgery.
However, the hospital told Phuong the next day that it had performed a gastrectomy to treat his “stomach ulcer” and not gallstones.
When the patient showed no recovery after 12 days but fees kept piling up (at US$350 per day), she transferred him to the private Vietnamese-owned Trang An Hospital.
Doctors there said his surgical wound was infected.
The patient was taken back to the French hospital and discharged several days later though he was still in poor condition and had to be put on a respirator.
With his condition deteriorating further, she took him to the state-run Viet Xo hospital which, after emergency treatment, transferred him back to the French hospital a third time.
He remains in critical condition with a surgical wound that has not healed and swollen limbs.
She has so far remitted US$10,000 in hospital bills.
By Lien Chau - Thanh Nien - May 6, 2006.
Woman complains against Hanoi French hospital blunder
A woman has lodged a complaint to the Vietnamese health ministry and the French embassy in Vietnam that a French-owned hospital in Hanoi treated her husband negligently and worsened his condition.
Pham Thi Hong Phuong also sent letters Wednesday to the media asking for a thorough inspection of the L'Hôpital Français de Hanoi, which is 100 percent France-invested.
Early last month her husband Ramio Jean was admitted to the hospital where doctors diagnosed “gallstones” in his gallbladder and said he needed immediate surgery.
However, the hospital told Phuong the next day that it had performed a gastrectomy to treat his “stomach ulcer” and not gallstones.
When the patient did not recover 12 days later but the fees kept piling up (at US$350 per day), she transferred him to the private Vietnamese-owned Trang An Hospital.
Doctors there said his surgical wound was infected.
The patient was taken back to the French hospital and discharged several days later though he was still in poor condition and had to use respirators.
Seeing his condition deteriorating, she took him to the state-run Viet Xo hospital which, after emergency treatment, transferred him back to the French hospital a third time.
He is now in critical condition with the surgical wound unhealed and limbs swollen.
She has so far paid the hospital US$10,000 in bills.
Earlier, in 2002, another Hanoi woman underwent an operation at the same hospital, supposedly to remove her left ovary. She discovered later that her right ovary had been removed instead.
The hospital’s deputy director Vo Van Ban had said the hospital was “prepared to perform free surgery to remove the tumor in her left ovary if she wished”.
By Lien Chau - Thanh Nien - May 3, 2006.
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