Hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City is where southern Vietnam comes when it is seriously ill. Cho Ray, in Cho Lon, is the largest hospital in the country and the referral point for every province south of the capital; the medical university’s teaching hospital stands two hundred metres away on the next street; and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, a few minutes further down the canal, is where the region’s dengue, rabies and meningitis cases go. Those are public hospitals — very cheap, deeply experienced, permanently crowded and conducted entirely in Vietnamese. Alongside them the city holds the country’s largest concentration of hospitals built for foreign patients: FV in Phu My Hung, Vinmec at the foot of the Landmark 81 tower, City International out west in Binh Tan, and the Vietnamese private group Hoan My in Phu Nhuan.

That gives a visitor three tiers rather than two, and what separates them is money and language rather than competence. This page lists seven hospitals with the practical detail: what kind of hospital each is, roughly how big, where it is, how to call it and how to find it on a map. Details were checked against each hospital’s own website in September 2026, and two things are worth knowing before you dial or hail a taxi. Several of these switchboard numbers changed in 2025 — older listings, including some very well-known ones, are wrong. And Vietnam abolished its district tier the same year, so official addresses now name a ward where they used to name a district; drivers, maps and habit still use the old district names, so this page gives both.

The 7 at a glance

Bed counts are approximate. Tap a name for the full page.

The hospitals

Which hospital should I go to?

With insurance and something serious, FV Hospital in Phu My Hung is the usual answer: internationally accredited since 2016, a 24-hour emergency department, its own ambulances and free interpreters. If you are staying in the centre, Vinmec Central Park is closer and equally accredited, and City International Hospital covers the west of the city. Without insurance, and for anything genuinely difficult, Cho Ray is the south’s referral hospital and the University Medical Center on the next street is the better-organised version of the same thing. For a fever that will not break, or an animal bite, go to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Hoan My Saigon is the middle ground: private, Vietnamese-run, far cheaper than the international tier. In a life-or-death emergency, the nearest emergency room of any of them, or call 115.

What will it cost?

Three tiers, and the gaps between them are large. At a public hospital — Cho Ray, the University Medical Center, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases — an outpatient consultation with basic tests is a few hundred thousand dong, and even an admission is affordable by Western standards; foreigners pay a higher tariff than Vietnamese patients and it is still very little. Hoan My Saigon, in the Vietnamese private tier, charges several times that and is still cheap by any Western measure. The international hospitals charge international prices: a consultation can cost more than a good hotel room, and a serious admission runs into thousands of dollars. The rule of thumb travellers use here is a factor of ten to twenty between the public and international tiers for the same treatment. Ask for a written estimate before any procedure at any of them.

Insurance, deposits and paperwork

The international hospitals are set up for travel insurance and will bill an insurer directly — but only where a contract exists and a guarantee of payment has been arranged, and usually only for an admission. Telephone the assistance number on your policy before you go if there is time: it can name the hospital it prefers and open the claim. Everywhere else is pay-and-claim, often in cash, and often before treatment rather than after. Take your passport, your policy number and any medication you are on. After a road accident, take the rental agreement and your licence as well: most travel insurers refuse a motorbike claim from a rider who held no valid licence for the machine, which in practice means an international driving permit with the right category or a Vietnamese one. Ask for an itemised receipt and an English-language medical report before you are discharged.

Getting there and ambulances

The national ambulance number is 115. It is free to call, it is answered in Vietnamese, and the crew takes you to the nearest appropriate hospital — which, if you are uninsured, generally means a public one. The private hospitals run their own ambulances and will send one to the number on their page; FV’s line, +84 28 3511 3500, is answered around the clock. For anything that can wait, a Grab or Be car is faster and more predictable than waiting, and a motorbike taxi is no place for an injury. Allow for the traffic, which is the real variable: the same four-kilometre trip from District 1 to Cho Lon takes fifteen minutes at ten in the morning and three times that at six in the evening, and the southbound run to Phu My Hung funnels over a single bridge.

Evacuation, and when you leave Vietnam

Bangkok and Singapore are roughly an hour and a half to two hours away by air, with several non-stop flights a day from Tan Son Nhat, and that is where the region’s largest trauma centres and specialist intensive care sit. The proximity is why insurers write medical evacuation into policies sold for Vietnam, and why it is the cover travellers most often underbuy: an air ambulance to either city costs tens of thousands of dollars when nobody else is paying. What to arrange is dull and has to be done beforehand. Buy a policy that names medical evacuation and repatriation explicitly, read its ceiling, check whether it excludes riding a motorbike, and save the assistance number in your phone rather than leaving it in an email you cannot open from a hospital bed. No hospital here can promise a transfer in advance: the decision to move a patient is made by doctors and by whoever is paying.

Pharmacies

For a cold, a mild stomach upset or a scrape you do not need a hospital at all. Pharmacies are on almost every street and sell most everyday medicines over the counter; the chains — Pharmacity, Long Chau, An Khang — are the reliable option, air-conditioned, with printed receipts and staff who can usually manage some English. Labelling is in Vietnamese, so photograph the box and check the active ingredient rather than the brand name, and buy from a chain rather than a street counter if you have the choice. What a pharmacy cannot do is diagnose dengue, which is endemic in the city and needs a blood test: a fever lasting more than two days, and any fever with a rash or bleeding gums, belongs at a hospital. So does an animal bite, the same day.

Ho Chi Minh City travel guide / Ho Chi Minh City tourist map / Ho Chi Minh City hotels / Vietnam visa guide / Vietnam destinations / Hospitals in Vietnam / All hospitals

Travel information, not medical advice.

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