Summary of Cardiac Missions

The cardiac program started at Kien Giang General Hospital (KGH), Kien Giang province, South Vietnam in October 2013. KGH had just been approved by the Ministry of Health in Hanoi to open its Heart Center, the first one to offer open heart surgeries and interventional cardiology services to adults and children 12 years and older, in the Mekong Delta region. Impact Health Vietnam’s goals and objectives have always been to identify young, emerging programs such as the one at KGH to offer help and support in the development of this important initiative. KGH’s heart center not only helps alleviate the overload cases of heart patients having to travel to hospitals in Saigon for treatments, but it also provides a huge financial relief to these patients if they choose to be treated locally at KGH. We assist KGH Heart Center by bringing education and training to the doctors and nurses in the department of open-heart surgeries, interventional cardiology and cardiac ICU care. Education and training in the areas of emergency care, basic life support and advanced life support were added as we continue to develop our cardiac mission program to fit the needs of our local partners.

In 2015, we brought our mission team to Can Tho city, also in the Mekong Delta region, and repeated similar help and assistance to Can Tho Central General Hospital and its newly opened cardiac center. Both Kien Giang and Can Tho’s cardiac programs were trained and supported by the senior surgeons, cardiologists and ICU doctors of Cho Ray hospital in Saigon.

From 2013 to the end of 2019, we have completed 5 cardiac mission trips to both Kien Giang and Can Tho. The pandemic of 2020, 2021 and the unstable and rapidly changing Covid situation of 2022 in Vietnam have temporarily halted our travel to Vietnam. We hope to resume our mission again in 2023.