Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ta Thi Tuyet Mai instructs on the use of the product. (Photo: SGGP)

According to the Health Ministry Bloc Party Committee in Ho Chi Minh city, over the past years, many health agencies have focused on increasing professional quality; and investing in and putting into operation advanced technologies and technique, satisfying the increasingly high demand of healthcare. Additionally, hospitals, doctors and nurses have actively joined humanitarian activities, including caring for poor patients and residents in remote areas.

Many poor patients at the Gia Dinh People’s Hospital cannot forget the face of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ta Thi Tuyet Mai, the doctor who is devoted to studying the scientific work “Lactose intolerance syndrome in severely ill patients” which has been applied and brought about high efficiency for poor patients.

Being Head of the hospital’s Nutrition Department, she said that she had always thought of a good product of low prices to feed patients who have to use intravenous drips (IV), as studies show that feeding seriously ill patients with high biological value products will help reduce complications and deaths, and shorten patients’ time in hospitals. Some 17% of patients at the Gia Dinh People’s Hospital are fed with IVs. However, few hospitals produce food set for IVs while poor patients have to make IV food from rice soup for low cost. “I am very heart-broken seeing the situation,” said Ms Mai.

Once, joining a consultancy for a 90-year-old patient who suffered from complication and malnutrition while she could not afford high protein milk with cost of VND5-7 million per day, she was determined to produce a high quality and low price milk. She took her own money to buy whole cream power milk and mix it with soy milk and good intestinal bacillus for the poor elderly patient to drink. After 2 weeks, thanks to good tolerance of the nutrition, her health was recovered and she was discharged from hospital.

The success has urged her and her partners to continue to study and pilot use for hundreds of time with VND1 billion allocated by the city Department of Science and Technology. To ensure complete use of the milk in people, she tested the milk carefully in mice. The results show that after 7-14 days, malnutrition mice fed by her milk reported better nutrition index than that fed by foreign imported milk while their health was much better than that fed by food. Test use in human also indicated similar results.

Ms Mai said that only with VND40,000-45,000 per day, poor patients receive adequate nutrition with the high biological value product. Not only benefiting poor patients, the work by doctor Mai is the first high protein product studied in Vietnam used for seriously ill patients with low prices. It can also be used as supplementary food for bad eaters or the elderly./.

Compiled by BTA