Doctors at many Chinese-owned clinics in Ho Chi Minh City have given deceitful prescriptions to patients, sold medicines at exorbitant prices, and in some cases, caused complications, many readers told Tuoi Tre.

Phuong Nam Oriental Medicine Clinic at 450 Ba Thang Hai Street, District 10, HCM City

Despite hyperbolic claims in their advertisements about their capabilities, Chinese-owned clinics failed to deliver their promise to patients and yet proved to be super-effective in fleecing them.

Bluffing their way through crooked treatment plans

Many patients said they ended up at Chinese clinics after seeing or reading their advertisements on the tube and in the newspapers.

Some of them were impressed with the printed materials, often made to look like health magazines and freely distributed by the clinics to patients, in which they boasted they could treat nearly all diseases.

“Trung Nam General Hospital” at 1509 Ba Thang Hai, District 11, is one of the places that could inflate a supersized balloon with their hot air. In their promotion materials, Chinese doctors here claimed to be able to perform an abortion on a woman “within 3 minutes” or “orthopedics of male genital organ with international techniques.”

It also advertised “13 family-owned methods to treat cancer.”

Similarly, an oriental clinic called Hien Dai at 337 Cong Hoa, in Tan Binh district, in their advertising leaflets and booklets, declared it can cure a wide variety of diseases with “esoteric methods.” Diabetes, it claimed, can be cured at the clinic after 2-4 times of treatment. Men with kidney failures, or suffering from sexual impotence or early ejection, could rid themselves of these problems after only 1 or 2 treatments!

The same hyperbole can be found at Truong An clinic at 786 Hong Bang, District 11 where patients are told diseases like impotence, kidney failure, infertility, hepatitis B, diabetes, gravel, and cirrhosis can easily be cured here in a short time with “age-old secret methods.” It even said it could help improve the size of short or small penis at patients’ requests.

These extravagant advertisements are often seen on many national TV channels, including SCTV7, SCTV9, VTV9, and BPTV1. However, many patients said after spending tens of millions on treatment at these places their health not only did not improve but in some cases they even suffered from complications.

Gross exaggeration is the name of the game

42-year-old N.Q.D., a Vietnamese-American, whose private part suffered some red rashes after using condoms, came to Trung Nam on August 9 after watching some advertisements of the clinic on television.

After a preliminary examination involving a test of his urine sample and a CT scan, a Chinese doctor told him he had urinary infection and Candida fungus and enlarged prostate. He offered D. treatment at the prices of VND2 million (USD96) for the fungus and urinary infection, 4-8 million for enlarged prostate and VND2 million for circumcision.

While waiting for the test results, D. talked to other male patients at the clinic who told him they were given exactly the same diagnosis. Doubtful, D. came to Binh Dan Hospital and was told he had not suffered any of those diseases.

To be continued