A builder of Vietnam’s pathology and forensic medicine

Professor Vu Cong Hoe has made a great contribution to Vietnam’s pathology and forensic medicine with over 100 scientific works. Associate Professor and Doctor Hoang Minh writes.

Professor and master Vu Cong Hoe was born in Nam Dinh in 1911. In 1937 he graduated as a medical doctor and worked as an assistant and lecturer at the university. In 1952, he successfully defended his medical master thesis in France. Having returned to Hanoi, he was nominated as a professor and lecturer on pathology, forensic medicine, embryology, hematology, bacteriology and parasitology.

In 1954, he continued to lecture at the Hanoi Medicine and Pharmacy University and was the head of the Department of Pathology of the Bach Mai Hospital and a pathologist-expert in many hospitals nationwide.

He has made great contributions to training doctors, and pathologists in particular, as a leading professor in pathology. He lectured at the Hanoi Medicine University, and many universities in the north, namely Thai Binh, Bac Thai, Haiphong, and some universities in the south.

As a scientist, Professor Hoe published over 100 works, articles and books on embryology and pathology. He is not only the builder of the pathology branch but has also made great contributions to developing the branch, a basic branch for disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention, and for the development of Vietnam’s medicine, in all four strategic tasks: training doctors, studying, serving patients and managing the branch. His works on features of disease and death models of Vietnamese people through biopsy and autopsy according to standards of the World Health Organisation, put diseases in Vietnam in 17 groups. These works are important for studying and teaching medicine universities and colleges as well as the development of Vietnam’s medicine. His model have become an important unique document for Vietnamese pathologists for many years, a valuable reference for clinical physicians to practise while serving as a basis for the health sector to work out strategies and approaches for many years. His works won the Ho Chi Minh Prize.

By Associate Professor and Doctor HOANG MINH