Domestic, global focus needed to address public health issues

 

HCM City (VNA) – A combination of various public health and preventive medicine
specialties should be paid attention to at the domestic and international
levels to protect people’s health amid emerging and re-emerging infectious
diseases globally, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son told a
recent conference at the Pasteur Institute in HCM City.

Problems in one
country could affect other countries easier than in the past since pathogens
and vectors now move further and faster than ever before through the global
transportation network, he pointed out.

The incidence of
non-communicable diseases too has increased, including in Vietnam where they
cause 70 percent of deaths, he said.

“So the health sector
in the country has expanded co-operation with other countries and adopted
global scientific advances for the prevention and treatment of diseases.”

The Government has
invested in developing preventive medicine facilities and human resources for
early prevention of diseases, he added.

Phan Trong Lan, head
of the Pasteur Institute, said social media poses a challenge to public health,
explaining, for instance, that many websites advocating against vaccines appear
first when searching on Google.

Of 100 websites on
vaccination, 43 per cent post contents against vaccines, he lamented.

Research has found
that if parents spend five or 10 minutes reading information against vaccines,
they do not get their children vaccinated.

It is very important
to ensure the websites of the World Health Organization and countries’ health
departments appear on top in online searches, he said.

According to the
institute, immunisation is not only essential for children, but also beneficial
to adults and pregnant women, patients with primary or secondary immunosuppression,
those with chronic diseases, and many others.

Lan said more and
more inaccurate information about health is posted on the internet, posing a
major challenge to the health sector.

The conference saw
experts from disease control and prevention institutes and centres around the
country table a number of studies on preventive medicine.

Son said the
conference is a platform for scientists and policymakers to share experiences
and skills in .

He instructed the
Pasteur Institute, which is designated by the Ministry of Health to address
public health problems basing on evidence, to invest more in its facilities and
testing equipment./.