On March 1-2, 2011, with the assistance of a team of about 100 doctors and nurses of the Hue Central Hospital, People’s Physician Bui Duc Phu performed successfully a heart transplant for 26-year-old patient Tran Mau Duc in Phu Hau Ward, Hue City. It was the first heart transplant directly performed by Vietnamese doctors. Earlier, on June 17, 2010, the doctors at Hospital 103 under the Vietnam Military Medical University carried out successfully the first heart transplant in Vietnam with assistance from Taiwanese experts.
Right after the heart transplant was performed by Dr. Phu and the doctors at the Hue Central Hospital, the then President Nguyen Minh Triet sent a flower basket to congratulate the surgery team. Their performance showed a gigantic step forward in Vietnam’s viscera transplant sector. 
 

Reminiscing about that historic surgery, Prof. Bui Duc Phu said: “The surgery took five hours, was full of tension and required absolute accuracy in every movement and step of the entire team of nearly 100 doctors and nurses. The heart transplant was performed with the world’s most advanced technique. It was the first time the scientists at the Hue Central Hospital performed successfully a heart transplant without the assistance of foreign experts.”
Talking about Dr. Phu’s talents, Prof. Huynh Van Minh, Deputy Director of the Hue College of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital, said: “Dr. Phu is a cardiovascular surgeon and an orthodox student of the late Professor Ton That Tung. He showed his ability and skills of heart surgery when he was very young. With a determination to practice, along with an innate ability, he has proven to be a talented cardiovascular surgeon.”
The life of Dr. Phu, a specialist in heart surgery, has been attached to the development of the cardiac and thoracic surgery at Hue Central Hospital. In the 1990s, while studying and doing a PhD thesis in France, he began to think of building relations to prepare for the heart surgery plans of the Central Hue Hospital in the future. Hue is far from the two large medical centers of Vietnam – Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam has a large population with many people suffering from heart disease, and the central region does not have any heart center.
Talking about this issue, Dr. Phu said: “I studied in France twice (1988 – 1990 and 1997 – 1998). Every time I went there I was concerned about how to learn the heart surgery technology and build a large heart center similar to those in other countries. So, I learned and studied the organization and construction models of the large heart centers in the world so as to apply them to Vietnam”. With that in mind, Dr. Phu was determined to realize his dream of building a large heart center in Central Vietnam.
After years of perseverance, on March 6, 2007, the Cardiovascular Center of the Hue Central Hospital was established under the sponsorship of the East Meets West Foundation and the Atlantics Philanthropies of the United States.
The centre is a modern facility consisting of 250 beds, 6 specialized departments and four operating rooms with state-of-the-art equipment. Dr. Phu’s dream has been realized and serves as wings to help his scientific ambition fly far to reach the horizon of new successes.
Although having attained many achievements, Dr. Phu always thinks that there are things that are vanguard today but will be old tomorrow. If we stop and are satisfied with what we have achieved, we will definitely lag behind. He is always absorbed in work, because for him, success at work is not for his own satisfaction but for relieving the pain of the patients.