Charity
Young doctors provide free health checks
  • By Hoang Lam | dtinews.vn | February 27, 2012 11:21 PM

A group of young doctors in Nghe An Province have established a charity club to provide free health checks and treatment for residents in mountainous areas.

 

The club’s members providing health checkups for resident in Thanh Tien Commune

Established in March 2011, the club has conducted five charity tours to provide health checkups and granted medicines to poor ethnic people in remote and mountainous localities in the province to date.

Members of the clubs are medical staff from several hospitals and healthcare centres from around the province.

Pham Ngoc Canh, Vice Chairman of the provincial youth union cum Vice Chairman of the club, said, “We don’t make a fixed timetable for operations. We organise tours whenever we get donations and sponsorship. It takes about a day to travel to clinics in remote highlands villages, hindering local residents from getting medical care on time. Many diseases are only diagnosed at their final stages. In order to partially improve the situation, we’ve decided to come here to provide help.”

According to Canh, during their first charity tour in March last year, they travelled to the mountainous commune of Thanh Tien in Thanh Chuong District, where they provided free health checkups and provided medicines to 200 residents, most of them were poor or disadvantaged children or the elderly.

The club’s members also provided local residents with basic health care tips to heighten their personal hygiene in order to prevent normal diseases.

“During our tours, we sometimes burst into tears when residents see modern medicine for the first time. They even don’t know how to use ordinary medicine,” Canh shared.

The club members previously toured Bao Nam Commune in Ky Son District, one of the most underprivileged localities in Nghe An.

Ve Po Xuc, Secretary of the communal Party Commitee, said, “Bao Nam has 10 highlands villages with a total 519 households, which are home to 3,281 people. All of them are Kho-mu ethnic people with up to 443 households are living under the poverty line. Due to economic difficulties and unfavourable terrain, local people find it really difficult to get medical checkups, let alone healthcare treatment. The communal clinic has only six medical workers, which is insufficient compared to people’s rising healthcare demands. People in Khe Nap, Phia Khoang and Huu Lan villages have to travel for five hours to get medical checkups.”

When the charity club set up mobile consulting rooms close to people’s houses, local residents rush to benefit from the free health checkups and medicines. Over 600 people were seen in the morning.

Doctor Tran Van Cuong from Nghe An Padietrics Hospital, said, “We’ve decided to travel to remote and mountainous localities in order to provide help to those who hardly have any access medical services. Our mission is not only to provide them with free health checkups and medicines but also help them detect their health problems earlier so they can seek suitable treatment.”

In order to maintain operations, the club’s members have to seek for donations and sponsorship from local agencies and businesses, in addition to their contributions.

Apart from their separate operations, the club has co-ordinated with major hospitals like Central Ophthalmology Hospital and Cho Ray Hospital to conduct eye and cleft palate surgery for disadvantaged patients.

“Until now, in addition to this provincial charity club, we’ve established 19 clubs at a district level in a bid to help improve healthcare services for people in remote and mountainous localities,” Canh noted.

Last year, the club had provided health checkups and medicines for 12,000 people.


The doctors want to provide such service to all residents



Young doctor show devotion to their job



Medicines were provided by local agencies and businesses



Early disease diagnoses

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