“Past the point of sanity”—South East Asia faces critical shortage of healthcare workers

When 46 year old Eli Mazur injured his head after a fall, he rushed to the state run hospital in Xuyen Moc, 100 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City. After running from one end to the other for about 30 minutes, Mazur found only two nurses, who offered to suture the cut. “It was difficult to find emergency healthcare in a rural area,” the life science lawyer at YKVN recalls.His experience is common for many Vietnamese people visiting state run hospitals, especially in rural areas. More than 12 1001 public healthcare workers quit their jobs between January 2020 and June 2022.A growing economy,2 increasing life expectancy,3 and greater demand for high quality4 healthcare services have put extreme pressure on understaffed and underfunded public sector healthcare facilities, which account for 86%5 of Vietnam’s hospitals. The covid-19 pandemic added to the strain, and many young doctors and nurses, overburdened with high patient…
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