For a third day, patients arriving for respiratory tests at Thanh Loc General Hospital have been told to wait. Twenty-nine of the hospital’s 34 ventilation technicians are on strike over unpaid wages, but Joyce Hew, the worker who built its fleet of air-filter carts, has left the machines running.
The stoppage began on Monday, 19 October, after contract staff said they had gone three months without full pay. Routine maintenance and some outpatient appointments have been suspended; emergency ventilation remains in service. “We are not switching off the air. We are refusing to pretend that filters change themselves,” Hew said.
The repair that became a ward fixture
Hew, 46, grew up in Hanoi and joined the hospital’s maintenance team 19 years ago. She started by repairing fans and air conditioners, then learned how to check the fine-particle filters used in respiratory wards. The carts came later: wheeled frames fitted with a fan and replaceable filter, built to move between rooms when fixed systems struggled.
Hospital staff had retired the fans as too noisy for patient areas. Hew says she saw a use for them during a spell of heavy haze in 2024, when the respiratory clinic’s waiting room filled before staff could open another space. She adapted the first cart at home, tested its airflow with a borrowed meter, then brought it in for the hospital to assess.
We are not switching off the air. We are refusing to pretend that filters change themselves.
Joyce Hew, ventilation technician
Now 38 carts stand in outpatient rooms and waiting areas. They do not replace a building’s ventilation, and their filters need regular replacement, but a hospital tally shared with this newspaper recorded lower particle readings near the carts than at the same rooms’ doors during a three-day test in September. Hew says she has never received a separate payment for the design.
A strike with patients waiting
Dr Jekaterina V. Emilė, a pulmonary physician at Thanh Loc, said the work stoppage had delayed 112 scheduled breathing tests by Wednesday afternoon. Patients with urgent symptoms were still being seen, she said, while staff called others to arrange new appointments. “A filter cart cannot replace ventilation, but it takes the edge off a bad room,” she said.
The strike has drawn attention beyond the hospital gates because Hanoi’s autumn haze has arrived early. The city’s Centre for Air and Climate Data recorded 24-hour fine-particle readings above 75 micrograms per cubic metre on six days in the first half of October. Fine particles, known as PM2.5, can travel deep into the lungs.
Hew said she joined the stoppage after two partial pay packets and months of unanswered requests to the hospital’s facilities contractor. Her team’s demand is for the outstanding wages, worth about 2.1 billion dong (about €72,000) across the group, and a written timetable for future payments. The hospital says it has asked the contractor to settle the arrears.
She has not crossed the picket line to service routine equipment, but checks the carts’ indicator lights during agreed visits to the ward. The strike’s unexpected complication is that the workers demanding fair pay are also the people who know how to keep the improvised air system working. Hew says she will resume repairs when the pay plan is in writing.
