Bankstown Vietnamese doctor Dr Vinh Binh Lieu awarded OAM

WHEN Dr Vinh Binh Lieu fled the aftermath of the Vietnam War and braved the seas to reach Australia he arrived with one goal: to help others.

Bankstown Dr Vihn Binh Lieu has been awarded an OAM for his many years of service to the community. Photo: Rob Pozo

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WHEN Dr Vinh Binh Lieu fled the aftermath of the Vietnam War and braved the seas to reach Australia he arrived with one goal: to help others.

The young doctor used his training in Saigon to earn a place at Sydney University and a few years later was looking after the health of his newly arrived community.

Now, after a lifetime dedicated to the community, the Bankstown GP has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the Vietnamese community and to medicine.

“I feel very humble and actually I always think I’m only a drop of water, like everyone else, but if people recognise me as a river or as a spring because I flow with all the people,” he said.

“So when I heard the news that I got that, I thought ‘that is the work of everyone’. Without my friends, without all the people we can’t achieve anything, especially all my charity work, all the organisation.”

Some of that work includes founding the Vietnamese-English Medical Magazine in 1998, the Vietnamese-Australian Medical Association in 2007, Vietnamese-Australian Dragon Business Association in 2007 and the Australasian Golden Heart Organisation in 2009.

Dr Lieu was also the vice-president of Vietnamese Community Australia from 1989-91 and chair of the Bankstown Local Health Council in 2012.

Dr Lieu, 68, said through his work he had seen a demand for Vietnamese-speaking health practitioners.

“There’s always a big demand in the health area. Initially when the people came as refugees and don’t speak English, especially elderly people, and now we have the new generation coming over directly from Vietnam.”

“For these people finding a Vietnamese doctor is very, very helpful especially when you are sick and the terminology is not easy to translate from one language to the other.”