Back in Hanoi

I got back to Hanoi on Sunday… and then early on Monday morning I was picked up and taken to Ba Vi District Hospital (about 70km out of Hanoi). I had opted to spend a week out at Ba Vi hospital to see what healthcare provision was like outside of the main cities. A large proportion of the population in Vietnam live in rural villages, and I thought I should see how they receive healthcare in order to get an overall insight into Vietnamese healthcare.

I’m so glad I decided to go out there… The hospital was a real eye-opener! Almost no doctors spoke English though, so I was allocated to this Vietnamese lady who had done public health research in Sweden, and she acted as my personal translator. It was great! I spent some time in the Infectious Disease outpatients department, and she helped me to take histories from patients (mostly diarrhoea histories), and also helped me to ask the doctor questions about HIV, TB, malaria and other infectious diseases in the area. After that, I asked if I could spend some time in the Traditional Medicine department! It was so cool, they have a whole department devoted to acupuncture and herbal remedies!

To give you some background on the hospital… patients can come from as far as 40km away. It serves a rural/village population, and has numerous satellite community clinics to deal with minor problems. Healthcare isn’t free in Vietnam, but there is an insurance scheme that people sign up to, it’s about US$5 a year (but bear in mind that in rural areas, some people are earning less than US$20-30 per year). If you can’t pay for insurance, you receive a card which entitles you to subsidised healthcare, but you get seen in a different part of the hospital (an even grubbier part). This info is all from chatting to my translator, so it’s not properly researched or anything… but I think it should paint a general picture. 

The hospital has 150 beds. It was pretty basic… it only has one X-ray machine (no CT or anything)… here is the X-ray machine:

There was another doctor in Ba Vi who had done some research in Sweden, and the two English speaking doctors took me under their wing and made sure I had things to do in the evening. We went out for dinner and karaoke!! Karaoke was fun, and so were the dinners… the food served in the rural areas definately do not cater for western tastes! The first night, an entire Chicken was served up… it’s organs (heart, liver, kidneys, boiled blood) were on one plate… Here is it’s head, with some organs in the background:

Another thing that we did in Ba Vi was visit some of the villages, and take New Year money packets to poorer members of the community. This was an unbelievable experience for me, because it enabled me to glimpse into people’s lives and homes, and I saw things that I would never be able to see as a tourist. The villages were a myriad of little crumbling buildings and dirt paths amidst farms and fields… Here is one of the little old ladies that we visited:

I was really enjoying my time in Ba Vi, but at the same time, I felt quite bad because I was taking up a lot of people’s time, and I’m sure they had other things they could have been doing instead of translating for me! I felt that my trip out to Ba Vi was for my benefit rather than being of any benefit for the patients or the hospital. So when they told me that there was transport back to Hanoi on Wednesday, I thought it might be better for me to go back early.

It was quite cold out in Ba Vi… but when I got back to Hanoi on Wednesday, the weather was glorious!! Today, it’s hot hot hot!! Apparently it’ll go colder again by Sunday, but for now I’m loving it. Wednesday night, I watched tv all night! Thursday, I got into tourist mode and took the Lonely Planet walking route to see all the streets of the old quarter (all the streets are named according to what they sell… I walked down silk street, gravestone street, toy street, rope/string street, counterfeit money street, altar street, tin street, musical instrument street)… It was great. I went for lunch at this Cha Ca (Grilled Fish) restaurant. It was slightly embarrassing because they almost refused to serve me. They shouted out loudly ‘not for single person… must have two person… not one person for cha ca’!!! But I begged a bit (no dignity left by this point), and they allowed me to have cha ca for one!

After lunch, I wandered back to my favourite coffee shop overlooking Hoan Kiem lake, and enjoyed the sunshine! For dinner, I met up with Annett and her husband for dinner at Chim Sao. We had catfish, which was quite an experience! These little charred fish plonked on the plate, skin, head, fins, all burnt to a crisp… They were quite good, but there wasn’t much meat on them, just lots of tiny bones that kept stabbing my gums.

Today, I met up with my friend Shazzy (who I met through the new hanoian website). Today we decided to treat ourselves to a nice lunch at the swanky Sofitel Metropole hotel. It’s one of the old Asian colonial hotels, like Raffles in Singapore… It was built at the end of the 19th century, and is very French colonial. We ate at the poolside cafe, and felt very posh! The prices in the menu scared me a little… but it’s a treat right? I save my pennies with the Xe Om / taxi drivers so that I can indulge in poolside moments like that!! Here’s a photo of us:

So since getting back from New Zealand, I haven’t done much hospital stuff… but I’m starting at Viet Duc hospital on Tuesday, and I will start treating this more like an elective than a jolly again! Being a lady of leisure is so much fun though!