Authorities in Hanoi Sunday held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the completion of the first phase of the third center of Hospital K, the largest cancer treatment facility in the north, aiming to reduce a severe overload at the hospital.

Hospital K on Quan Su Street. Photo: Internet

A total of 300 beds will be put into service in Thanh Tri district’s Tan Trieu commune in the first phase, which cost about VND440 million. Meanwhile, the second phase is slated for completion in 2013.

A 1000-bed facility will be available for cancer treatment once the two-phase project is finished.

The project, costing VND1.4 trillion, was announced in 2002 and began in 2007.

Besides the newly-established facility in Tan Trieu, Hospital K has two other centers in Hanoi, with a capacity of 810 beds, on Quan Su Street and in Tam Hiep Commune in Thanh Tri District.

At the ceremony Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that the government will manage to allocate enough funding to help speed up the facility’s second phase for completion by 2013 as planned.

The prime minister also asked the Ministry of Health to develop networks of public ontological hospitals in two cities under the central government - Da Nang and Can Tho.

The patient overload in centrally-run hospitals has become more severe in the last couple of years, a report said.

Public hospitals were reportedly operating at an average capacity of 116 per cent in 2009, 120 per cent in 2010 and 118 per cent last year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien told a NA session earlier this year that reducing the overload at centrally-run hospitals was one of the ministry's key tasks until 2015.

Source: Tuoi Tre News