Prof Dr William P. Magee, managing director of Operation Smile, pays a working visit to the City International Hospital in the Hoa Lam – Shangri-La Medical High Tech Area.

Prof Dr William P. Magee, managing director of Operation Smile, recently paid a working visit to the City International Hospital in the Hoa Lam – Shangri-La Medical High Tech Area.

It was aimed at connecting and creating bilateral co-operation opportunities for setting up professional clinics to serve the community.

A developed Operation Smile

Operation Smile was one of the first non-governmental organizations from the US to come to Viet Nam as part of the normalisation of Viet Nam - US ties and with the hope of changing the lives of unfortunate children with congenital malformations and other facial malformations through voluntary surgery programmes.

“Operation Smile would like to go further by not only operating on 2,000 – 3,000 unfortunate children each year, but also developing professional clinics to improve the quality of community healthcare programmes,” Nguyen Viet Phuong, development deputy president of Operation Smile Asia Pacific and head representative in Viet Nam, said.

“We have a huge human resource of 12,000 volunteers and medical experts in 60 nations around the world for 35 years, and we hope to take advantage of these strengths to increase professional training courses, improve safety and create favourable conditions for local people to access modern healthcare,” he added.

Tran Thi Lam, chairwoman of the Hoa Lam Group, the developer of the Hoa Lam – Shangri-la Medical High-tech Area, said she is delighted and ready to co-operate with Operation Smile to bring benefits to local communities, especially unfortunate children with congenital malformations, and contribute to developing a modern and efficient medical industry.

“This is my wish for the high-tech medical field,” she said.

Dr Truong Vinh Long, medical managing director of the Hoa Lam Group and general director of the Hoa Lam International Hospital, said after the City International Hospital, Hoa Lam International Hospital is the second to be built using the public – private - partnership (PPP) model between Hoa Lam Group and People’s Hospital 115.

It has 350 beds and VND1.5 trillion (US$68 million) to build.

These are two out of a total of six hospitals which are planned to be built in the Hoa Lam – Shangri-la Medical Hightech Area.

After visiting the newly-completed Hoa Lam International Hospital, Prof Dr Magee expressed his surprise at the reasonable investment, good design, quality of construction, modern equipment and the space available for patients. He expected the co-operation to be successful.

Two days ago Vietnamese Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, who is also the chairman of the Sponsoring Council of the Viet Nam Children Support Fund, met Prof Dr Magee and appreciated the contribution of Operation Smile in bringing smiles to and changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese children.

She hoped that in future Operation Smile would continue to support Viet Nam in taking care of children's health in general and providing surgery and rehabilitation for children with facial deformities. The Vietnam Children Support Fund would actively co-ordinate with and create conditions for Operation Smile to bring smiles to more children with congenital malformations in the country, she promised.