Work starts on $270 mln oncology hospital in Ho Chi Minh City

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (2nd L), former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (2nd R) and HCMC’s Party chief Dinh La Thang (R) attend the ground-breaking ceremony for Ho Chi Minh City’s second Oncology Hospital in District 9 on June 26, 2016. Photo credit: Phuoc Tuan/Zing

Construction work began on Sunday at Ho Chi Minh City’s second Oncology Hospital, which is designed to have 1,000 beds.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Ho Chi Minh City’s Party chief Dinh La Thang attended the ground-breaking ceremony.

The hospital, which will cover 55,594 square meters in District 9’s Tan Phu Ward, has a total investment of nearly VND6 trillion (US$270 million) funded from the state budget.

The 10-story hospital will include an outpatient clinic and inpatient, radiotherapy and chemotherapy sections. It is expected to help reduce overload for the current Oncology Hospital in Binh Thanh District once it is open in the last quarter of 2017.

Vietnam logs around 150,000 new cases of cancer annually, more than half of which prove fatal, according to figures released by the World Health Organization in late 2014.