A Vietnamese mother with her newborn.
Needing The Net
Dr. Mark Diem
prescribes the
basics for
Vietnam's ailing
health-care
system.
RUTH LITTMANN
STAFF WRITER
young moth-
er and her
newborn baby slumber_
on a bamboo floor mat.
They lie in a Vietnam
hospital near a wall sul-
lied with water stains
and moss. The infant's
head rests on a terry-
cloth bath towel.
Such sights became
familiar to Dr. Mark
Diem, a Huntington
Woods resident who
recently traveled to
North and South
Vietnam to evaluate the
condition of the country's
medical system.
His diagnosis was
grim, but not hopeless:
"My son Jeffrey is 8
years old. His chemistry
set is better equipped
than some of their labs.
But the Vietnamese are
an industrious and
fiercely independent peo-
ple. They do the best
they can with what
they've got."
What they've got, how-
ever, just isn't enough to
provide adequate health
care to the nation's 70
million people, Dr. Diem
said. Vietnam has no
Magnetic Resonance
Imaging machines,
which enhance images of
internal organs to detect
tumors and other irregu-
larities.
Some clinics are not
even equipped with elec-
trocardiograms (EKGs),
which measure the elec-
trical activity of the
heart. In America, EKGs
have been commonplace
for years.
Conditions are most
dire in Vietnam's hilly or
swamp-ridden rural
areas where most of the
population resides. In
the mountains, people
battle malaria, the num-
ber-one killer in the
world. The disease hasn't
afflicted Americans for
90 years, since infested
U.S. swamps were
drained, he said.
Children in Vietnam
suffer from malnutrition
and dysentery. Many die
from pneumonia and
tuberculosis.
"These are things we
haven't seen in 40, 50
years — since antibi-
otics," Dr. Diem said.
Medical director of
First Care Medical
Centers in De,troit,
Ferndale, Warren; Ann
Arbor and Jackson, Dr.
Diem also is pursuing a
master's in public health
at Loma Linda
University. His trip to
Vietnam was a learning
experience, too, he said.
It also enabled him to
combine two loves: trav-
eling and helping people.
He traveled with four
other doctors and two
journalists. All paid
their own way. The trip
was organized by the
Vietnamese government
and Aid To Southeast
Asia, a Minnesota-based
organization formed by a
Cr)
CY)
LU
Dr. Diem administers an IV.
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