January 8
We had a wonderfully informative day today, with two great site visits. The first one was to the largest hospital in Saigon (which I learned today is still the official name of HCMC –Ho Chi Minh City), at least the largest state hospital, and not only in the city but in the southern part of Vietnam.
The hospital is at the top of a four tier system of state care, and has about 120 operations a day. It accommodates 2,800 patients a day, with 1,700 beds, which somehow or another doesn’t compute. There’re huge “ward rooms,” and no private rooms. About 35% of the patients are trauma results – i.e. automobile accidents, or more likely motorcycle crashes. Last year, the government made wearing helmets mandatory, which has reduced the number of deaths, but our guide (who’s not a state employee) made the point that drivers on the open road get crazy, and we’ve seen enough of the traffic to make me glad someone else is doing the driving. As I said, there are a lot more vehicles than there were the last time I was here (2001), but the infrastructure leaves much to be desired. Not just in HCMC, but elsewhere. We were on Highway 1, the NS connector – I think it goes from the Mekong Delta to the border with China – roughly 1,500 miles. There are .62 doctors for every thousand people, and while I don’t know what comparable figures are in the United States, I would suspect over 100X more (at least), and certainly would be better in the countryside in the U.S.! What said “stay healthy” to me more than anything else was the revelation that the doctors have no national certification – any medical school can decide its own curriculum.
If you can’t stay healthy, it also helps here (as elsewhere) to be wealthy to get good health care. There are private hospitals, but the average income in Vietnam is $862, which means some folks are very rich and some are very poor; it’s the kind of contrasts I’ve described elsewhere in the developing world. We’re in the Gucci district, but elsewhere in HCMC are shacks. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.
Our afternoon visit was to a fascinating furniture factory. The only foreigner working there is an American, graduate of Carleton and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, who’s the Chief Operating Officer, and in his mid 30s. I enjoyed his presentation so much I asked him if he’d host my students when we come back to Saigon in May. His company is a real niche player – he does upscale hotels, stores (Louis Vitton, etc.) He noted that the contraction of credit on the part of the Hong Kong and Shanghai bank for all furniture companies forced his company to seek bonding from Vietnamese banks (which scared some of his customers), and has caused some of his suppliers to fold also. It was a graphic illustration of the hazards of the flat world. One item that might explain why the furniture industry has come from the Carolinas to Vietnam was that he was making a piece of furniture (the woodworker was from a woodworking village near Hanoi, working from a drawing of the desired piece) and would take 200 hours to gouge the wood – for a product to be sold for $1,200 (if priced just on labor, that would be $6 an hour!) The ride there took us to the fringes of HCMC, on a two-lane road, with traffic that would have resembled what we saw in India last year – had there been animals on the road! In the factory lot itself, there were no cars – only bikes and motorcycles.
My day started with a nice walk around 6 a.m., and I think it’s time to get to sleep. But not without a lesson on the currency. Vietnam’s currency is the dong. One dollar is worth 17,000 dong. The largest bill is I think 100,000 dong, so you cash $100 U.S. and have a large pile of “folding money.” When I got back from my walk, though, someone in our group asked how I was responding to jet lag. “I feel like a million dong.” I hope you’re all feeling well, too.