. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – People deserve comprehensive
healthcare at the commune-level medical stations even when they are not ill and
for this to happen, the operation of these stations must to be standardised, Minister
of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien has stressed.
The stations are now capable of providing vaccinations
and nutrition counselling but are bad at detecting, monitoring and treating
chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, she told the
launching ceremony of a training course on care for chronic diseases at
commune-level medical stations in Hanoi on July 9.
The grassroots healthcare system is failing to win public
trust as people hesitate to visit communal health clinics, largely because
these establishments lack medicine and capable personnel, while the medical
costs at the stations covered by national health insurance are low, Tien said.
The Ministry of Health has been piloting 26
communal health clinics in eight cities and provinces, including three in
Hanoi. These clinics have been provided with well-trained and experienced
medical workers able to not only give health counselling, vaccinations and
primary medical checkups but also perform ultrasound scans or electrocardiogram
tests and manage non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, high blood
pressure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the minister noted.
She also said that the ministry has been facilitating
education for general practitioners and day-care services alongside home-based
healthcare as an alternative to hospital admission. Furthermore, the ministry
has been working to develop a database of personal health records.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Jun Nakagawa from the World
Health Organisation said about 380,000 deaths a year in Vietnam result from
non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and that NCDs are blamed for 73 percent of all
deaths nationwide. More than 40 percent of these deaths occur in people under
the age of 70, Nakagawa added.
The main reason behind this is the lack of care services
for non-communicable diseases at primary care providers, she said, stressing
the necessity to reform Vietnam’s primary healthcare sector.
Better management of non-communicable diseases can only
be achieved by improving capacity of communal health clinics and a clear
financial mechanism to allocate funds collected from service fees at the
clinics is also required to motivate health workers, she added.
The training course is scheduled to take place in Hanoi,
Ho Chi Minh City, Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa and Ca Mau, among other areas. –VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
