rs the schooling of gifted and handicapped children.Vocational schools at the secondary and college levels serve to train technicians and skilled workers. Graduates of professional specialized schools at the college level primarily fill mid-level cadre positions in the technical, economic, educational, cultural, and medical fields. Senior cadres in these fields as well as members of the upper bureaucracy usually have graduated from regular universities.PUBLIC HEALTH 11 In 1945 Vietnam had forty-seven hospitals with a total of 3,000 beds, and it had one physician for every 180,000 persons. The life expectancy of its citizens averaged thirty-four years. By 1979 there were 713 hospitals with 205,700 beds, in addition to more than 10,000 maternity clinics and rural health stations; the ratio of physicians to potential patients had increased to one per 1,000 persons, and the average life expectancy was sixty-three years for males and sixty-seven years for females. These expectancies remain true today. Information concerning the health sector, although fragmentary, suggested that the country's unified health care system has expanded and improved in both preventive and curative medicine. Medical personnel total about 240,000, including physicians, nurses, midwives, and other paramedics. The quality of public health care and the level of medical technology remain inadequate, however, and authorities are increasingly concerned about such problems as nutritional deficiency, mental health, and old-age illnesses. Cardiovascular diseases and cancers are reportedly not widespread but had increased in recent years. Information on AIDS was unavailable. LIVING CONDITIONS 12 The improvement of living conditions has consistently been one of Hanoi's most important but most elusive goals. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, food, housing, medicines, and consumer goods were chronically scarce as agriculture and industry slowly recovered from the effects of p...
