Medicine Without Borders:A Case Study Of The Inter-sectoral Cooperation In Creating The First Taiwanese General Hospital In Vietnam

This was a qualitative research on the first Taiwanese private general hospital that provided medical services to Vietnamese public in Vietnam—Shing Mark Hospital.1 This hospital was unique as the hospital was the result of a complementary partnership between a Taiwanese medical Non-governmental organization(NGO),Changhua Christian Medical Foundation(彰化基督教医疗财团法人),2 and a Taiwanese non-medical private entity,Shing Mark Group(震兴集团).In this partnership,the NGO provided medical technology,medical support and medical supervision and the private entity provided capitals,hospital administration and a medical platform in Vietnam.To dissect the situation of this cooperation,this research posed one main and one sub questions.The main research question of this study was:Why does a Taiwanese private general hospital provide medical service to Vietnamese public in Vietnam?The sub-question was:How does the cooperation between a medical NGO and a non-medical private entity facilitate medical exchanges between Taiwan and Vietnam?This research grounded Geoffrey Wiseman’s“Polylateralism”in the context of transnational cooperation.As the Vietnamese government was incapable of satisfying the rising public demand for better and more accessible medical treatments in Vietnam,it turned to foreign private medical service provider,Shing Mark Hospital from Taiwan,to fulfill the aforementioned demand.This research validated Wiseman’s notion of Polylateralism and the possibility of utilizing this systemic arrangement in addressing the need to provide goods and services.The success of Shing Mark Hospital in Vietnam may be attributed to a complementary combination of the Taiwanese private sector and non-government sector,as well as the policy support of the Vietnamese government.This research also demonstrated the key factors contributing to the success of such cooperation:First,government fostered a business-friendly environment to attract foreign investments.Second,complementary partnership between private sector providing the necessary capitals and non-government sector providing technology and supervision.