Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - More than 70 hospitals nationwide that conductkidney dialysis fail to follow proper procedures for liquid quality managementand testing regulations, according to the Health Ministry.

Associate Professor Doan Ngoc Hai, head of the National Institute ofOccupational and Environmental Health under the Health Ministry saidthat the recent water sample testing conducted by the institute found that theReverse Osmosis (RO) filter system used at hospitals is an open system withseveral different steps. Each step might cause risks of water pollution. It isvery difficult for the hospitals to maintain water quality during kidneydialysis procedures.

He said that hospitals did not conduct regular water quality supervision andfully test water figures. One reasons for this was that their budgets werelimited due to low incomes from kidney dialysis service.

Most of the hospitals hired service companies to maintain the system. Staff ofthese companies, however, often lacked professional skills and were not trainedto control risks. Therefore, the water quality of kidney dialysis system wasnot ensured by maintenance, he said.

 “We visited the RO filter systems at many hospitals in Vietnam andleading hospitals in Singapore,” he said. “We can see that the system of almostall hospitals in Vietnam does not ensure quality or is unstable. As a result,there is a high amount of bacterial contamination.”

According to Associate Professor Hai, poor quality water for the RO filter systemdirectly affects patients’ health and reduces treatment efficiency, evencausing fatalities.

In June this year, eight patients died in Hoa Binh General Hospital while theywere receiving kidney dialysis in one of Vietnam’s most serious medicalincidents in recent memory. Water used for kidney dialysis did not meetnecessary health standards.

Investigations revealed that the company which maintained and replaced the ROfilter system of dialysis machines used chemicals to purify the system. Duringthe process, however, the machines’ water supply tubes were not purifiedcarefully, leaving chemical residue. After pasteurisation of the RO filtersystem, the company did not check the quality of water samples before handingthe system over to the hospital.

According to National Institute of Occupationaland Environmental Health, the international standard for the watersource to produce dialysis water requires the water to be clean and drinkable.In Vietnam, most water doesn’t meet this standard.

“70 percent of the water source does not meet the standard,” Hai said. “Wehave warned that hospitals must regularly supervise and test water quality butmany of them cannot do it due to lacking testing budget.”

Maintenance of water for dialysis must be carefully considered because itrelates to human life, he said.

The World Health Organisation has approved an instruction on RO water qualitysupervision for kidney dialysis, which will be conducted bythe Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health.

The institute had learned from conducting regulations on water qualitysupervision, visiting the RO system of Singaporean hospitals and setting uptrainings on RO systems with participation of leading experts, Hai said.

The trainings aimed to help trainees understand potential calamities in kidneydialysis treatment and water quality standards applied in Vietnam and in theworld, he said.-VNA