April 2001 • Volume 7 • Number 4
Airlift provides powerful push for family practice in Vietnam
BY SHERI PORTER
With a toast of fine cognac, family practice took one giant step closer to becoming a reality in Vietnam. With his glass held high, Professor Nguyen Dinh Hoi, chancellor of the Ho Chi Minh University and dean of the medical school, thanked the family physician contingent of the ninth Physicians With Heart delegation, the first to Vietnam. The celebration dinner on Feb. 24 ended the Feb. 1626 humanitarian airlift on a high note.
"I thought it was really a landmark to get an invitation from this particular man -- he's such a storied figure in medicine in Ho Chi Minh City," said Alain Montegut, M.D., of Brunswick, Maine. Montegut has worked since 1996 to lay the groundwork necessary to bring family practice to Vietnam. The evening of Feb. 24, for the first time, Hoi publicly announced his support for Montegut's effort, which will culminate with the opening of the first three family practice residencies in Vietnam in 2002.
Above: After a morning medical symposium, lunch provided an opportunity for John Patz, D.O., right, of Issaquah, Wash., to delve into details about family practice with medical students at Ho Chi Minh University Medical School.
Right: After the delegates distributed rice, school supplies and toys to residents of a leprosy village east of Ho Chi Minh City, this woman loaded a bag of rice onto her bicycle for the short trip home.
Earlier in the week, the delegation celebrated the arrival, first in Hanoi and then in Ho Chi Minh City, of a Federal Express airbus that carried 23 tons of donated pharmaceuticals and medical supplies valued at $4.25 million.
The delegation members shared gifts, warm smiles and encouragement with blind school children in Hanoi and villagers in a leprosy community east of Ho Chi Minh City.
Since 1993, Physicians With Heart -- a project of the AAFP; AAFP Foundation; and Heart to Heart International, a humanitarian aid organization based in Olathe, Kan. -- has delivered more than $52 million worth of medical aid to areas of need in former Soviet republics and now to Vietnam. Go to http://www.aafp.org/airlift to read more about these airlifts.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2001 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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