The Heart Institute was created in 1992 by Professor Alain Carpentier and Dr Duong Quang Trung who was at the time director of the Health Department Services of Ho Chi Minh City. Its mission is to offer high-quality care to Vietnamese patients suffering from heart diseases, but especially children. Before the creation of the Institute, no such structure existed in the Ho Chi Minh Area and today the number of cardiac operations is on the increase due to growing demand.

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Considered as a reference in cardiac surgery in Vietnam, a lot of people go to Ho Chi Minh to consult the Institute’s cardiologists. Unfortunately a number of families cannot afford to pay for surgery. A department of social welfare was therefore created to cover the cost of the operations for the most destitute Vietnamese people.

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This is why the Centre, created by Professor Carpentier for precisely that purpose, is allocating the whole of its profits to the Institute so that a maximum of people can benefit from it. Thanks to this generosity about 200 life-saving operations a year are been performed on the most needy children.

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The patient can finance the operation by way of his medical insurance if he has one, with the help of local associations or his family’s savings and the remainder is taken care of by the Heart Institute. The average price of an open heart surgery is USD $2000.