SOCIAL IN BRIEF 6/3

Cholera threats in southern border provinces
Since Tet (Lunar New Year), several cases of cholera and widespread acute diarrhea have been recorded in the Mekong Delta Province of An Giang along its border with Cambodia.

Most of the people with cholera or acute diarrhea are border residents who often travel to Cambodia for businesses, while some are Cambodians, head of the Health Ministry’s Preventive Medicine and Environment Department, Associate Professor Dr Nguyen Huy Nga, said March 3.

Cambodian health agencies said there is a cholera epidemic on the Cambodian side of the border with An Giang Province.

Dr Nga warned that cholera could spread across the southern border provinces of Vietnam as cholera vibrios have been found in water sources.

Jica signs with Cho Ray Hospital for brain injury rehabilitation  

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City signed an agreement on March 1 for a project to improve brain injury rehabilitation services 

Under the “Project for Improving Medical Rehabilitation Service in the Southern Area of Vietnam”, JICA will provide technical assistance to Cho Ray and other Southern hospitals to improve brain injury rehabilitation.

“Rehabilitation is one of most three important tasks of medical institutions besides examination and treatment, but it has received very little attention recently,” Dr. Nguyen Truong Son, Director of Cho Ray Hospital said.

“At provincial level, rehabilitation departments are often integrated in the traditional medicine departments and lack professional staff,” Son said.

The project will also develop a rehabilitation handbook for patients and families following patients’ discharge from hospital.

The project follows the successful completion of a 2005-2008 JICA project at the hospital called “Supporting for people with disabilities”.

According to a survey conducted by Cho Ray Hospital, the current average number of rehabilitation staff is one physical therapist per 108 beds.

Only 10 per cent of cerebra-vascular accident and head trauma patients received rehabilitation treatment when they returned to provincial hospitals, according to data provided by Cho Ray Hospital.
Improvements to such rehabilitation services were urgently needed the survey said.

The three year project will commence in May.

Road accidents kill 940 in Ho Chi Minh City last year 
Traffic accidents killed nearly three people a day in Ho Chi Minh City last year, with 940 people counted dead in the city’s 1,123 road wrecks, along with another 495 injured.

Motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh City caused 783 accidents, killing 649 and injuring 365 in total last year, accounting for most of the traffic accidents and related casualties recorded in the southern hub.

The city’s Traffic Safety Agency’s latest report showed that motorbike-caused accidents made up 69.7 percent of traffic accidents in the city, while the deaths and injuries accounted for 69.6 and 75.1 percent of the city’s total figures, respectively.

HCMC currently has some four million motorbikes out of nearly 4.9 million registered vehicles.

The city has set up objective to cut down on the number of motorbikes for years, yet latest statistics showed that nearly 1,000 motorbikes are registered every day, increasing more than 10 percent year-on-year.

Not to mention that some one million motorbikes from other provinces circulate in the city every day.

Central highlands to review fatal dog attack investigation  
The People's Procuracy in the central highlands town of Buon Ma Thuot will thoroughly review the controversial investigation into a dog attack that killed a woman last month, local newswire VnExpress reported Saturday.

Nguyen Hong Nam, deputy head of Buon Ma Thuot People's Procuracy, said the police had been slow to inform the judicial agency of their decision to drop the investigation, which was finalized February 11 yet only sent to the agency 15 days later.

Such decisions by law must be sent to the judicial agency immediately following their issuance, the official said in the newswire.

"The institution has asked police to hand over all related documents for a thorough review," Nam said.

The dropping of charges in the case had drawn harsh criticism and unanswered questions from the victim's family members.

According to police reports, on January 21 victim Pham Thi Ngan and two other women, Giang Thi Diep and Nguyen Thi Thanh Tram, entered Pham Ngoc Thanh's farm in Ea Kao Commune's H'drat Village to collect coffee seeds without permission.

They were then attacked by Berger dogs raised by Thanh on his farm. While Diep and Tram managed to climb up trees, Ngan was killed by the animals.

Thanh had erected a signboard warning of fierce dogs before the incident, police said, rejecting accusations that Thanh let the dogs fatally attack Ngan on purpose.

They also denied the accusation that Nguyen Dinh Son, who was believed to manage the dogs and the farm, didn't help Ngan when she was attacked.

Son asked the women to get out of the farm when seeing them enter before he left the area, investigators said. When he returned, he found Ngan had been killed by the dogs, police said.

However, witnesses, including Diep and Tram, insisted that Son was present when the dogs were attacking Ngan, but he left without offering the 55-year-old woman any aid despite her cries for help.

Vu Thi Hue, who lives behind Thanh's farm, said warning signboards were only set up on the day Ngan was buried.

Although Thanh paid Ngan's family VND120 million (US$6,495) for her burial, Nguyen Van Khoi, the victim's son, said he was puzzled by police's conclusions, as witnesses had told them many times that Son didn't help his mother when she was in danger. He said there was obvious evidence supporting the claim.

Many local people also found the decision depressing, according to VnExpress.

"If the case is dropped suddenly, heartrending deaths caused by dogs like Ngan's will continue," a man who lives near Thanh's farm told the newswire.

Poppy fields destroyed in central Vietnam      
Border guards in the central province of Nghe An have destroyed three opium fields covering thousands of square meters in total this year, local newswire Vietnamnet reported on Saturday.

One was part of a 1.5-million-square-meter field that included other crops, one covered 400 square meters, and the other covered 300 square meters.

The flowers were found near the province's western border, Colonel Nguyen Truong Thi, head of Drug Crimes Prevention Office at the Nghe An Border Guard, told the newswire.

Local ethnic minority peoples often used opium poppies as food, not necessarily drugs.

The Nghe An agency so far had identified Moong Van Khoa, 51, as the owner of one of the fields, according to the news source.

Khoa was fined and disciplined in public.

Under Vietnamese regulations, those who plant opium poppy could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

However, the punishment is only imposed when the person continues planting the cash crops despite warnings from authorities. After issuing such warnings, local governments often provide poppy farmers with support to plant other crops.

Residents want to shut down polluting steel plant  
Dozens of people Friday gathered in front of a steel plant in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau demanding that it be shut down for pollution violations.

The demonstrators also tried to prevent trucks carrying materials from entering the plant of Thep Viet Company at Phu My Industrial Park, local news website VietNamNet reported.

They came to the plant carrying a sign that read "Thep Viet Plant causes pollution and needs to be shut down. Save us."

Following the gathering, the authorities came to the plant for inspections.

Thep Viet Company Friday explained that strong winds blew dust from the plant into the residents' houses. The company promised to solve the problem soon.

The residents, however, did not agree. They asked authorities to close the plant or relocate them to other areas unaffected by the pollution.

They said the plant had affected their lives for three years. Although its managers promised to eliminate the noise and air pollution by the end of last year, the situation had yet to improve, they said.

Local authorities have yet to make a decision on the case.

Van Mieu steles endangered by human touch  

Eighty-two stone steles at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam (Temple of Literature – first National University) in Hanoi are in danger of being irreparably damaged because of the large number of people who are touching them.

Temple official Nguyen Hai said last Thursday that more than 70,000 people visited the place over four days of the Tet (Lunar New Year) festival from February 14-17.

"People visiting the Temple of Literature during Tet has for long been a cultural feature.

"Recently, however, many people have come to touch the stone steles and stone tortoises to wish for good luck and this can damage the precious structures," Hai said.

The situation has developed over the past few years and this year, the temple built an iron fence to prevent visitors from touching the stone tortoises and steles, but a large number of people broke the fence on Lunar New Year's Day, he added.

Last December, the cultural activity center at Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam sent documents to UNESCO for recognition of the stone steles of doctoral candidates in the Le – Mac dynasties (1442- 1779) as a world cultural heritage.

However, the damage being caused currently to the structures will soon destroy them, experts have cautioned.