Doctors Return From Vietnam Hospitals Tour

In the orthopedics wing of the largest hospital in Vietnam, Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi, patients lie two to a bed and rely on their families to bring food, medicine and clean sheets. A door is the only thing separating a two-table operating room from the busy city street.

But according to three Southland doctors who toured several Vietnamese hospitals this month, the dilapidated medical facilities belie the skill of the doctors who work there.

“Their yen for learning is phenomenal,” said Richard Feldman, a North Hollywood surgeon who was one of two San Fernando Valley doctors on the trip. “They have the knowledge; they just don’t have the equipment.”

Less than three months after a 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam was lifted, the doctors took part in a 10-day mission to forge ties between the medical communities of Vietnam and Southern California.

The orthopedic surgeons toured four hospitals in Saigon and Hanoi, giving lectures to hundreds of Vietnamese doctors on a variety of procedures such as arthroscopic surgery, which the Vietnamese do not practice because they lack the sophisticated equipment. They also met with government health officials and hospital directors.

The trip was the beginning of what the doctors and a Los Angeles businessman who organized the group hope will be an ongoing relationship between the medical communities. As a result of the trip, American hospitals and medical equipment companies have donated equipment and supplies to help the Vietnamese update their facilities, and several of the Vietnamese doctors plan to visit the Southland.

The California doctors saw their counterparts use hacksaws to cut metal plates for use in repairing fractures, watched surgeries, and met patients with a variety of ailments and infections. For the doctors, who received some support from their hospitals and paid the rest of their expenses themselves, the tour offered more than an opportunity to help Vietnamese doctors gain expertise in surgical techniques.

“I started medical school in ‘68,” said Gilbert Jody, a Van Nuys orthopedic surgeon. “Vietnam was a central part of our lives.”