Deputy PM calls for better preventive health care services

Localities should allocate more money to reach the target of spending 30 percent
of health care service’s national budget on preventive medicine, he said at a
working session with medical agencies on March 21.

He also urged medical centre to play an active role in applying technology to
modernise healthcare records and medical check-ups to reduce waiting times.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said technology application is the
biggest challenge the sector needs to address. The ministry will step up
technology application in the future to connect medicine supplying facilities
and launch electronic personal health records.

In the past, local hospitals applied new advanced techniques including tissue
transplants, and successful lung transplants. The ministry has made efforts to
improve health care service and change health care workers’ attitudes towards
patients, heard the meeting.

Tien said hospital overcrowding can be solved by investing in health care
services at local medical facilities to meet patients’ demand while central
hospitals must focus on developing techniques and quality healthcare to stop
people travelling abroad for treatment.

However, the Deputy PM pointed out shortcomings at central and local facilities
that make the services unable to meet expectations such as poor infrastructure,
lack of medical equipment or healthcare workers of low capacity.

To address these shortcomings, he requested the health care sector to improve
their capacity by making medicine quality better, especially medicine used to
treat non-infectious diseases.

Dam praised the health ministry for its efforts to hold national centralised
bidding which helps reduce medicine prices and asked the sector to bring costs
to same levels as Malaysia, the country with the lowest prices in ASEAN.

He asked healthcare sector to connect pharmacies to ensure medicine
distribution and preservation. “The medicine quality will not be ensured unless
it is well preserved and transported,” he said.

It aims to better manage prescriptions and selling prescribed medicine, looking
forward to a future of having 100 percent of antibiotics sold with
prescriptions by 2020.

Health care insurance costs should be adjusted in accordance with people’s
income and must be relevant with service quality. The health ministry must
increase the health care coverage for students as well, he said.-VNA