Health Minister visits Hoc Mai House in Vietnam

By Claudia Liu
20 July 2006
Tony Abbott, the Australian Minister for Health and Aging, has visited Sydney University's Hoc Mai House, an Australian-Vietnamese project at Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi.

Mr Abbott was in Vietnam to discuss avian influenza prevention, preparedness and response. The minister's delegation also visited Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

Hoc Mai - meaning 'forever learning' - is a not-for-profit organisation that fosters medical education between Australia and Vietnam. It was set up by the Australia Vietnam Medical Foundation, established by the University in 2001 to promote an exchange of teaching and learning between Australian and Vietnamese health care workers.

The foundation helped build Hoc Mai house as a shelter for the families of patients at Viet Duc Hospital in 2005, and provides regular scholarships and exchange programs for doctors in Vietnam and Australia.

John Aquilina, Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly and Fellow of the University of Sydney Senate, also visited Hoc Mai earlier this year, meeting medical students from Sydney University who are currently serving an internship at the hospital.

Contact: Richard North
Phone: 02 9351 3720