Doctors, nun, save boy's life

Doctors at HCM City's Nhi Dong 2 Hospital yesterday, Dec 17, successfully performed a transplant on a boy using a kidney donated by an unrelated person.

It was the first successful case of its kind in Viet Nam.

The operation took three hours using a donated kidney from an anonymous nun.

Nine-year old Nguyen Xuan Khanh from the Central Highland province of Lam Dong suffered from kidney failure at birth.

The doctors are doing the operation at Nhi Dong 2 Hospital. (Photo: Thanh Nien newspaper)

His parents could not give him their kidneys because of blood incompatibility. Khanh waited for years without a success for a donated kidney and his situation slowly deteriorated.

A Catholic nun who heard of his life-or-death plea offered one of her kidneys and the operation went ahead. She prefers to remain anonymous.

The doctors are supervising the health of both Khanh and the nun.

This is the tenth case of a kidney transplant operation on children at the hospital.

Mongolia, Vietnam ink education agreement

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Tran Quang Quy and Mongolian ambassador to Vietnam Dorj Enkhbat signed a 2013-2016 agreement on education cooperation in Hanoi on December 17.

Accordingly, the two countries will increase the exchange of delegations to share experience in education development and cooperation. They will particularly encourage the exchange of lecturers, scientists and young researchers to learn from each other’s experience for joint future projects.

They will promote bilateral cooperation programmes between their universities and institutions and consider the possibility of signing an agreement on mutual recognition of their university degrees.

Vietnam and Mongolia began exchanges of students and cultural cooperation in the 1960s. Under the 2006 agreement, Vietnam has received 15 Mongolian students every year. Since 2009 it has received a total of 62 students from Mongolia, and sent 14 students to Mongolia for studies.

The two countries have signed some 20 cooperative agreements on economics, trade, culture, education, science-technology and other areas.  

Taiwanese experts save girl's leg

After six months, eight operations and nearly VND1.2 billion, surgeons in Taiwan territory have successfully saved the leg of 8-year-old Nguyen Thi Loan from Lam Dong Province.

The young girl had congenital swelling in her left leg due to lymphedema, a condition of localised fluid retention and tissue swelling caused by a compromised lymphatic system.

Experts from China Medical University Hospital in Taiwan subjected Loan to a 6-month treatment course starting in June 2012, which included 8 plastic and skin-grafting surgeries.

Speaking at a press conference in Ha Noi today, Loan's mother Nguyen Thi Tam said: "I am very happy because Taiwanese doctors have saved my daughter's leg after many hopeless years."

Doctors said that Loan can walk normally but still needs further training as part of her rehabilitation programme.

Loan was prenatally diagnosed with a lower-limb defect that made her left leg noticeably larger than the right one.

According to Tam, Loan started her treatment when she was 20 days old and her left leg swelled to 7 times the normal size despite receiving endless treatment from various local doctors.

Tam said that the treatment cost (roughly US$57,000) was donated from a Taiwan External Trade Development Council's humanitarian medical assistance project.

Food poisoning found alarming

Since early this year, there have been 164 cases of food poisoning, leaving 33 dead and nearly 5.400 others hospitalised.

According to the Food Hygiene and Safety Department under the Ministry of Health, the figures show a sharp increase over the same period last year.

Most victims claimed to have eaten substandard food at work places or wedding ceremonies, not only at home.

The Department has taken measures to control food imports and sales in the domestic market. In the third quarter of this year, 833 batches of food weighing 12.176 tonnes were imported into Vietnam, and 54 of them (about 60 tonnes) failed to meet food hygiene and safety standards.

Deputy Head of the Department, Nguyen Thanh Phong, warned of the alarming rate of food poisoning which he said might increase when people need a huge demand for food for traditional lunar New Year (Tet) celebrations.

Guest workers in RoK encouraged to return home on time

A meeting was held in Uijeongbu city of Gyeonggi province, the Republic of Korea (RoK), on December 17 to encourage Vietnamese guest workers to return home as scheduled after their labour contracts terminate.

The event, jointly organised by the Vietnamese Embassy in the RoK, the Overseas Labour Centre under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Uijeongbu Foreign Workers Centre and RoK Human Resource Development (HRD), attracted 300 Vietnamese workers.

According to Luong Duc Long, Deputy Director of the Overseas Labour Centre, there are 17,471 Vietnamese labourers in the RoK with work contracts expiring in 2012, and 45 percent (7,900) of these people have returned home on schedule.

The number of Vietnamese workers failing to return home on time is much higher than the 20 percent average of the 15 countries sending workers to the RoK.

As a result, the RoK Ministry of Labour and Employment did not extend the MoU to receive Vietnamese workers, and suspended Korean-language tests for Vietnamese workers.

The country also temporarily stopped 12,000 Vietnamese worker dossiers to RoK employers, Long said.

In the first half of 2013, there will be 6,000 Vietnamese workers with contracts ending in the RoK.

Long called on Vietnamese guest workers not to impact the labour cooperation agreement between the two countries, and urged them to follow employment regulations and local laws.

To encourage foreign workers to return home on time, the RoK Government has offered them some preferential policies.

Since late December 2011, the Vietnamese Department of Overseas Labour (DOLAB) has cooperated with the HRD to organise five Korean-language tests for 3,219 eligible workers who returned home as scheduled and wish to come back for work.

From July 2, 2012, the RoK has allowed foreign workers who return home on time to go back to RoK three months later without having to take any language tests.

Dengue fever rises in Dong Nai

Ten people in southern Dong Nai Province have died from dengue fever since the beginning of the year, the highest number in five years.

According to the province's Preventive Medicine Centre, the fever has emerged in all 171 communes and wards in the province, affecting nearly 5,400 people.

Low awareness and poor prevention among local residents were to blame for the disease spreading, said centre director Cao Trong Nguong.

He added that in most fatal cases, patients were taken to hospital when the illness had become too serious.

Poor environmental hygiene caused by rapid urbanisation also helped create favourable conditions for the disease, he said.

The province is taking measures to clean up the environment and raise public awareness of better hygiene.
Japan funds school home

The Japanese Government will provide US$120,000 to build an eight-room boarding house at Dak Ro Nga secondary school in the central Highlands province of Kon Tum.

The deal was signed on Monday by Yasuaki Tanizaki, Japanese Ambassador to Viet Nam, and Tran Van Ca, chairman of the Viet Nam Support for the Handicapped Association, which is in charge of the project.

The Dak Ro Nga school in Dak To district has 246 students. More than half of them currently live in a boarding house which was built for 60. Twelve teachers also need accommodation.

Policy dialogue protects female guest worker rights

Experts made proposals to protect Vietnamese female guest workers’ legitimate rights, at a seminar in Hanoi on December 17.

Delegates from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and UN Entity for Gender Equality, the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) examined the situation of Vietnamese female workers abroad, and current support policies for them.

They suggested that greater attention should be paid to these women as they are more vulnerable to and at higher risk of abuse, especially those working as housemaids, nurses and orderlies.

There should be policies to facilitate and improve women’s awareness in budgeting and saving, they said.

The Vietnamese State and firms have made efforts to build and implement legal regulations to protect the legitimate rights of guest workers, especially female employees. Many businesses have sent female managers abroad to deal with issues relating to female guest workers.

Vietnam has issued a law on guest workers under contract, which specifies sufficient regulations to protect guest worker rights. However, gender equality has yet to be ensured, and labour managers abroad still lack experience, said the participants.

To protect the legitimate rights of female workers, participants agreed more specific policies are needed, adding that the revision of the Law on Vietnamese Guest Workers should take gender into consideration.

The Department of Overseas Labour (DOLAB) under the MoLISA and the UN Women have been conducting a joint project to empower female guest workers since December 2009.

Poor people need legal aid

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has called for close co-operation between relevant organisations and the Viet Nam Justice Support Association for the Poor.

Speaking at a conference hosted by the association (VIJUSAP) in HCM City on Sunday, he said providing free legal assistance to the poor was an urgent issue for both the Government and society.

For years, the Party and Government had been focused on legal support for poor people, those benefiting from the Government's priority policies, and ethnic minorities, and this was manifested in the Politburo's recent Solution No.49-NQ/TW on judicial reforms.

Protection of the legitimate rights and interests of all people was one of the goals of judicial reform.

At the same time there was a need for legal assistance, especially among those who did not have a full understanding of, or opportunities to know, legal regulations.

Through legal assistance to these people, the laws were enforced, enabling them to enjoy all their legal privileges.
The Prime Minister would direct ministries and local departments to make assistance accessible to the poor in a practical and effective manner.

VIJUSAP should improve the professional skills of its staff to provide better support to the poor, enabling them to protect their legitimate rights and interests.

Dr Ta Thi Minh Ly, VIJUSAP chairman, said the association's six centres have done pro bono work for thousands of disadvantaged people, including the poor, women, children, migrant workers, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and families of deceased soldiers.

Reports from 50 provinces and cities showed that since 1997 free legal assistance was given in more than 1.5 million cases, with VIJUSAP's lawyers acting as representatives or counsel for the poor in 9,200 of them. It provided legal consultation in the remaining cases, she said.

VIJUSAP also plans to open a further 16 centres. Established in May 2011, it is a non-profit organisation made up of volunteers and lawyers.

Customs officers seize DVD gambling devices

The HCM City Customs Department seized over 200 online gambling DVDs four days ago in collaboration with the local post office.

According to the local authorities, these items are banned from use.

All items were in consignments from the UK, and had moved through Singapore to Viet Nam.

Vietnam hands over school to Lao province

The Vietnamese and Laos Finance Ministries jointly held a ceremony on December 17 inaugurating the upgraded Northern Laos Financial College in Luang Prabang province.

The VND22 billion (nearly US$1.1 million) project, is a gift from the Vietnamese Finance Ministry. It built a two-storey dormitory which can accommodate nearly 300 students and upgraded the working space for the school’s staff.

Lao Deputy Finance Minister Santiphab Phomvihane thanked the Vietnamese Party and State in general and the Finance Ministry in particular for their assistance to Luang Prabang over the years.

The inauguration of the project is evidence of the effective cooperation between the two ministries that helps improve human resources training for the northern Lao region, he said.

VNN/VOV/VNS