Care and surgery
Training and skills transfer
Building and equipping hospitals
Prevention and screening
Emergencies and humanitarian crises
Maternal health
Vietnam
Axes of intervention
Care and surgery- Training and skills transfer
Start of mission: 1994
For over 30 years, La Chaîne de l'Espoir has been committed to supporting the training of Vietnamese healthcare professionals. But even today, access to healthcare remains difficult for some of the most vulnerable families. To fight against this injustice, we are at their side to ensure that their children receive the surgical treatment they need to survive.
Background
Families still excluded from the healthcare system
37% of children
Vietnamese from ethnic minorities suffer from stunted growth (compared with 19.4% nationally).
14.5% of children
Vietnamese live in poverty.
0.83 doctor
per 1,000 inhabitants in Vietnam (compared with 3.39 in France).
Sources: Unicef (2022 figures), World Bank (2016 figures)
Over the last few decades, Vietnam’s healthcare system has improved considerably. But despite health coverage that is supposed to protect 90% of the population, access to healthcare remains cruelly problematic for the poorest populations or those living in the most remote, rural provinces. Many families refuse to have their children treated because of the difficulty of travelling and the high cost of treatment. This is particularly true in the case of the most serious illnesses requiring complex operations.
Since the 90s, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has been working to help consolidate healthcare provision in Vietnam.
As early as 1991, Professor Alain Deloche supported the creation of the Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville Heart Institute by the Alain Carpentier Foundation, and helped train teams at the Broussais Hospital in Paris.
Thirty years on, the Heart Institute has become a veritable center of excellence where healthcare professionals from all over the world come to train.
Our mission in Vietnam is not over yet. In 2018, we opened the Children’s Pavilion in Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville to welcome and support the most vulnerable children and their families in their care.
“Our experience in Vietnam is a success story. We trained and built a cardiac pediatrics structure in a country where there was nothing. 20 years later, our Vietnamese teams are totally autonomous and operate on several thousand children a year. Today, they are among the trainers of our African surgical teams.
Pr Alain Deloche, heart surgeon and founder of La Chaîne de l’Espoir
Our humanitarian action for children in Vietnam
The Heart Institute: a recognized center of excellence
Since the establishment opened in 1991, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has contributed to the training of surgeons at the Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville Heart Institute. The aim of this initiative was to enable them to increase their skills and autonomy, including for the most complex operations. This objective has now been fully achieved! As proof, Vietnamese medical teams contributed to the training of their Senegalese colleagues at the Cuomo Cardiopediatric Center in Dakar in 2016, and Burkina Faso’s Tengandogo University Hospital in Ouagadougou in 2019. These are fine examples of South-South cooperation.
“My training at the Heart Institute in Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville was beneficial in more ways than one, as it enabled us to practice surgery under the conditions of a developing country – so closer to the socio-economic constraints we experience. Similarly, the cardiac pathologies treated are more similar to those we encounter in Burkina Faso.”
Dr Adama Sawadogo, Head of Cardiac Surgery at Tengandogo University Hospital, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)
Le Pavillon des Enfants: access to healthcare for all children, including the poorest
For a poor family living several hundred kilometers from the capital Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville, getting treatment for a sick child can quickly become an obstacle course. Travel is complicated, accommodation hard to find, treatment too expensive… Unfortunately, many people give up on having their children treated. To give everyone, whatever their ethnic, geographical or social background, access to the care they need, we created the Children’s Pavilion in 2018.
“Since the Covid crisis, life has become even more difficult for the poorest families. Many have lost their jobs. So it’s very hard when one of their children is ill. On average, a heart operation costs 3,000 euros, which is very expensive for them. By enabling their child to be treated, we give them back hope.
Sister Anna, Dominican sister of the Congregation of Saint Catherine of Siena in Vietnam
With a capacity of ten beds, the Pavillon des Enfants provides comprehensive medical and social support for children and their families:
- thanks to its links with the country’s network of dispensaries, the Congregation of Dominican Sisters identifies vulnerable children suffering from heart disease and organizes their transport to Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville,
- Children and their accompanying adults (parents or relatives) are then accommodated and fed in the Children’s Pavilion,
- care is provided by partner hospitals in Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville, and support continues right through to post-operative follow-up,
- health, hygiene and nutrition awareness campaigns are also offered to families.
All in all, the operating costs of the Children’s Pavilion are six times lower than hospitalization costs in other medical or surgical establishments in the country.
Between 2018 and 2023, more than 200 children have been cared for.
Bao: his operation saved his life!
At the age of five, Bao suffered from a very serious congenital heart disease. Very poor and living 120 kilometers from the capital, his parents found it impossible to have him treated. But this was without counting on the action of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters and the unfailing mobilization of La Chaîne de l’Espoir donors! The little boy was admitted to the Pavillon des Enfants and operated on at our partner Tan Duc Hospital in Hô Chi Minh City. The surgeon who took charge of him was none other than Dr Phuong, who had herself been trained in the past by Pr Alain Deloche. Thanks to this tremendous chain of solidarity, Bao is now completely cured and can return home to his family in peace.
Our partners
They support our humanitarian aid
in Vietnam
No linked partners found.
Photos: La Chaîne de l’Espoir
