Another telling statistic is the number of hospital beds available in Hanoi. In 1955, there were 3,012 beds for a population of 530,000. In 1993, the population has risen to 2.25 millions, but the number of beds is only 7,250. If the growth of the population is taken into account, the number of beds available have actually decreased by half. This setback , in the capital of Vietnam, does not bode well for the rest of the country .
Health insurance provides another example of government policies gone awry.
Though the government has allowed the health insurance industry to undergo privatization in the last two years, in reality this has not happened. The industry is still in an experimental stage, wherein workers and students are sometimes forced to buy insurance that does not adequately meet their needs. As far as public sanitation is concerned, the decline can be seen by the relatively common occurrences of food poisonings, mainly in the settings of elementary schools, nursing homes, and restaurants. According to the statistics of the country's own environmental protection agency, there are numerous incidents of industrial pollution such as the dumping of raw toxic chemicals into the rivers and canals around Saigon, mostly near the poor neighborhoods or slums. What is more alarming is the fact that governmental agencies and organizations have been engaging in operations that caused direct damages to the environment.