Slippery Sally

Australian Vietnam Volunteers Resource Group (AVVRG) was formed by a group of Vietnam Veterans who were concerned about their observations of the ongoing devastation of the social and physical infrastructure in Vietnam as a consequence of a prolonged war and the country's 20 year isolation from the West. This was particularly evident in the former Province of Phuoc Tuy (renamed the Ba Ria/Vung Tau Province in 1975), which during the war contained the Australian Task Force Base at Nui Dat and the Australian Logistic Support Group and RAAF support units at Vung Tau.

The Vic Health Education Team is located in Melbourne, Australia. The Team began by implementing a Nurse Conference in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in 2003.  The continuation of the Conferences has evolved to include several other health care professions. All Team members fund their own visit costs.  Currently, the Health Education Team engages with eight major hospitals in HCMC, with each hospital having a specialty health care interest relationship with the Team. In contrast to hospitals in Australia, Vietnamese hospitals are huge.  Many have in excess of 1000 beds.  For example, Cho Ray has 1700 beds with approximately 3000 patients sharing those beds.  One of the maternity hospitals had 51,000 births last year (the Royal Women's’ Hospital in Melbourne had 6,000).

January 23rd 2010 saw 43 Victorian Health Education Team members begin their 2 week program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The program included doing working with the nurses, providing lectures and seminars at 8 different hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City.

23 team members of the 43 strong team, left together from Melbourne, while other team members had made their own arrangements to include other travel.  On arrival at the Tan Son Nhat airport we were surprised at how quickly we passed through passport control to collect all our baggage (approximately 720kg of it!). The rest of the team came in under their own arrangements, either prior to our arrival, or soon after.

The team took 100 SlipperySally’s with them and they were used to top up the hospitals existing slide sheet supplies (you can never have too many!). The photo shows training initially and then a lady being moved post caesarian section with a slide sheet... with quick to adapt staff in Vietnam it was described as see one transfer, do one transfer, teach one transfer and the staff were off using the slide sheets in the recovery room where they do 100 C sections per day.

It is worth noting that team members not only donate their own time but fund their own visit costs – a great contribution.

If you are interested in participating in these great experiences, go to their website is www.avvrg.org.au