Lang Son health sector: 75 years for the safety of the community

(LSO) – After the August Revolution in 1945, Lang Son health sector gradually overcame difficulties, built a complete and strong health care system, well meeting the people’s health care needs.

   Overcoming difficulties

Before the August Revolution, in the whole province, there was only 1 French military doctor, 2 nurses, 5 nurses and 2 midwives, with 1 hospital, 1 health station and 2 maternity wards located in Lang Son town and That Khe town, Trang Dinh district with a total of about 30 patient beds. This medical system mainly served the treatment of the French army and those in the ruling apparatus. The treatment of people mainly followed methods of folk, by traditional healers, priests (as known as healers) with traditional remedies. Therefore, diseases such as smallpox, polio, malaria etc. uncontrollably raged. The situation of giving birth to babies without the ability to feed them is also quite serious, especially in highland and remote areas, raising the child mortality rate in the period 1930-1945 from 34 to 46%. .

After the August Revolution, the health sector gradually grew from nothing. From 1946 to 1954, Lang Son trained 255 nurses, midwives, and cleaners, encouraging for the establishment of 6 district health departments and 195 medical departments in villages and communes, accounting for 90% of communes in the province.

Medical staff of the Provincial General Hospital intervene in the patient’s pulse with the modern DSA digital scanners

Overcoming the difficulties caused by the US Air Force’s destructive war in 1965 – 1972 and the Border War in 1979, Lang Son’s health care has constantly grown and made great progress, completing political assigned tasks; creating momentum to enter the renovation.

   Towards the goal “Equity – Efficiency – Development”

In this new context, the whole health sector has made a new qualitative development, following the direction of building a health care system strong enough to prevent epidemics and treat effectively; to systematically develop and improve capacity of all 3 health facilities (province, district, and commune). Currently, the sector has more than 4,200 medical staff, over 28% of which have bachelor degree, 5.2% that have college degree, 62.5% that have professional high school degree. The province always pays attention to the facilities and human resources for the hospitals. Specifically, the Provincial General Hospital was newly built with a scale of 700 beds and invested in equipment, human resources training for specialties such as: cardiovascular intervention and the implementation of some excess techniques, bringing great benefits to the people; Provincial specialized hospitals have been upgraded; District hospitals have been strengthened, expanded, invested in equipment to improve capacity, complete the medical treatment system etc.

In addition, the health sector is also interested in investing, consolidating and consolidating the preventive health care system. Thereby, the system of preventive health care agencies has been effectively operating. Through the prevention and control of Covid-19 from the beginning of 2020 up to now, Lang Son preventive health care work has been strong in both professional and organizational methods to prevent epidemic from spreading.

With long-term fundamental strategic solutions and great efforts of the whole sector, by the end of 2020, the whole province strives to have 26 more communes meeting the national standards for communal health, bringing the total number of recognized communes in the period of 2011 – 2020 to 118 communes, reaching the rate of 65.2%; strengthening the training and education, increasing the percentage of doctors to 10.5 doctors per 10,000 people; promoting investment in facilities, especially for grassroots healthcare, striving to reach 29.5 patient beds per 10,000 people and raising the rate of population participating in health insurance to over 98%.

After 75 years of establishment and operation, Lang Son health sector has grown rapidly, becoming a solid foundation to protect the people’s health.