Health Care
No Easy Access
Patient transport to and from health centers and hospitals is a great challenge for highland villagers and boarding students as well, and often the available heath care is beyond means.
Boarding students carry one of their own to a hospital, an eight kilometer trek.
A volunteer physician accompanying Minors staff on a project site visit stops to treat a Hmong child. Infections can turn serious when treatment is distant or unaffordable.
No Doctor
Minors has printed and distributed several thousand copies of the Vietnamese version of Where There Is No Doctor, by David Werner, at remote schools in many provinces of Viet Nam, primarily in the central and northern highlands.
This valuable instruction book for medical treatment and emergency care in remote areas is provided to all graduates of Minors' Health Care Training Course for Teachers, and most schools at which we provide support are provided a copy as well.
We continue to distribute copies of the book, Where There Is No Doctor; so far more than 500 schools in remote mountainous areas have received this book.
Respiratory problems, conjunctivitis, and other infections, as well as cuts, are the major ailments treated by teachers charged with caring for boarding students.
Training
Since 1994, beginning in Ha Giang Province, we have provided medicine, medical kits and 43 Health Care Training Courses for more than 2,365 teachers at several hundred schools in these five northern provinces.
This program focuses on teachers charged with caring for the boarding students, some of whom are only six years old. These week long classes are taught by physicians, midwives, pharmacists, herbal medicine specialists and other medical professionals from local district hospitals.
Minors has cooperated with 20 district hospitals in ten provinces of Viet Nam over the years.
Teachers from schools in Bac Kan Province at health care training course.
At our last training course in Lao Cai, a physician demonstrates CPR as a teacher asssists
Graduates of Minors' Health Care Training Course for Teachers at Remote Commune Boarding Schools in Bac Kan Province
All set in Dien Bien Province
Medical Kits
Through 2013 Minors has provided 1,931 Medical kits to village and commune schools in remote areas across the northwestern highlands of Viet Nam. Photos below show kits being delivered at schools along with other support, and a kit in use in a teachers' dormitory.
Medical Kit Contents:
Adhesive Tape, Bandage Rolls, Band-Aids, Cotton, Gauze Pads, Iodine, Vitamins,
Medicines for treatment of Cough, Diarrhea, Infection, Inflammation, Pain
Patients
Patients Assistance
For more than a decade, Minors has been providing assistance to critically ill patients, in exceptionally difficult economic circumstances, in need of life-saving surgery or cancer treatment. This program has to date helped 162 patients at The Cancer Institute, and 345 patients at Viet Duc Hospital, both in Ha Noi.
In Laos we have over 13 years provided assistance to more than 200 patients at hospitals in Vientiane and Xieng Khouang Province, 18 children who were transferred to Thailand for cancer treatment and surgeries, and helped cover medical and rehabilitation costs for several patients who were injured by exploding ordnance left from the U.S. war.
