MBBS in Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy

Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy sits in Can Tho City, the largest city in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Local people call it CTUMP. The Faculty of Medicine is the oldest and largest part of the school. It opened in July 1979, when the region badly needed doctors of its own. At that time the faculty was part of Can Tho University. Teachers came in turns from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi to give lectures. Doctors at Can Tho General Hospital taught the ward rounds. In December 2002 the medical faculty became a full university in its own right, and CTUMP was born. The Faculty of Medicine has stayed at the centre of it ever since.

The school is public. It reports to the Ministry of Health of Vietnam, not to a private board. That one fact shapes much of what students find here. Fees are set by government decision and published in writing each year. Teaching hospitals are state hospitals. Staff hold civil service posts. Some families worry that a private college may close or raise fees without notice. This setup takes that worry away. CTUMP is also listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools. The listed name is Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy Faculty of Medicine. The country is Viet Nam. The start year is 1979.

The main campus covers roughly 83 acres on Nguyen Van Cu Street in Ninh Kieu ward. It is a working campus rather than a showpiece one. Lecture blocks, laboratories, a skills centre, a library, hostels and a large university hospital share the same grounds. Students walk from an anatomy class to a ward in a few minutes. The Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital is the anchor site for clinical training. Students also rotate through Can Tho Central General Hospital, Can Tho Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Can Tho Children's Hospital, the oncology hospital and district health centres across the delta. Between them these sites cover a population of close to twenty million people.

That patient base is the strongest argument for studying here. The Mekong Delta is crowded, hot and wet. It carries a heavy load of dengue, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, snake bites, farm injuries and drowning. Cases of diabetes, stroke and heart disease are rising fast too. Wards are busy. A student who shows up and asks questions will see more real pathology in a week than many students see in a month elsewhere. Teachers here expect students to examine patients themselves, not to watch from the back of the room.

The Faculty of Medicine is large. It runs 27 departments, from anatomy and physiology through internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics, neurology, psychiatry and emergency medicine. Around 219 staff members work in the faculty, and about seven in ten hold a postgraduate degree. The list includes a professor, eight associate professors and twenty two PhD holders. It also includes more than a hundred masters and a group of senior clinical specialists. Dozens more are studying for higher degrees right now. Teaching is not left to junior doctors alone.

The medical degree takes six years of full time study. Vietnamese graduates receive the Bac si Y khoa, which is the Doctor of Medicine title used across the country. Most bodies that assess foreign degrees treat it as equal to the MBBS. India's National Medical Commission asks for a six year primary medical degree and a screening test. Students should still check the current NMC rules before they apply. Those rules change often.

CTUMP has taught international students for years. It is often described as the only public medical university in Vietnam that takes overseas undergraduates in medicine. Most of them come from India, with smaller groups from Nepal, Cambodia, Laos and Africa. Teaching for this group runs in English. Vietnamese language classes run alongside it, and they are not optional in spirit even if the timetable is light. From the third year on, wards run in Vietnamese. A student must be able to greet a patient and ask about pain. Students who work at the language in years one and two find clinical work much easier later.

Class sizes for the international cohort stay modest. That matters in small group tutorials, bedside teaching and skills labs. The university runs a clinical skills centre with mannequins, suture trainers, delivery models and basic simulation gear. Students practise cannulas, catheters, chest examination and CPR there before they touch a patient. Anatomy is taught with cadaver dissection, prosections and models. Laboratories for biochemistry, microbiology, parasitology and pathology are used for real practical classes, not demonstrations.

Living in Can Tho is cheap by any standard. The city has about 1.2 million people. It is calm compared with Ho Chi Minh City, and it is safe to walk at night. On campus hostels are available, usually shared rooms with fans or air conditioning, a study desk and shared bathrooms. Many senior students rent rooms nearby instead. A hostel bed costs a few hundred dollars a year. Food is the real saving. A bowl of noodles at a street stall costs under a dollar. Indian and halal food is available in the city, and hostels with Indian mess arrangements have grown as the Indian student group has grown. Most students spend between 150 and 250 US dollars a month on everything outside tuition.

Getting there is simple. Can Tho International Airport connects to Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and a handful of regional cities. Ho Chi Minh City is about three and a half hours away by road. Direct flights from India to Vietnam take around five hours, which makes going home for a holiday realistic rather than a once in three years event.

Research at CTUMP has grown steadily. Staff publish on infection, drug resistance, heart disease, cancer screening and public health. The university works with partners in Japan, South Korea, France, Taiwan and the United States. It hosts visiting teachers and exchange students. Undergraduates can join research groups. Student science conferences run each year. This is not a world research giant. Still, a keen student can get a poster or a paper.

Student life is ordinary in the best sense. There are football and badminton teams, a music club and a choir. Students run health camps in rural communes and give blood. The festival calendar is busy. Indian students mark Diwali and Holi on campus. Vietnamese Tet closes much of the city for a week. Rural health trips are one of the better parts of the year. Students travel to villages in the delta. They run screening clinics with staff. They see how care works where there is no CT scanner.

The honest picture is this. CTUMP offers a long established public medical school, a huge clinical case load, low costs, and a degree recognised in the World Directory of Medical Schools. In return it asks for real work on Vietnamese. It asks for patience with slow paperwork. It asks you to live in a small Vietnamese city, not a capital. Students who accept that trade tend to do well here. Students who expect a Western style campus experience in English at every step do not. It suits the self reliant far more than the passenger.