The Prime Minister has approved the Vietnam National Strategy on Pharmacy till 2020, with a vision to 2030.

According to the Government Portal, under the strategy, domestic products will account for 80 percent of the total medicines consumed in the country by 2020.

The national strategy sets the goal to provide enough high-quality medicines with reasonable price and supply medicine for social policy beneficiaries, ethnic minorities, and poor people at remote and advantaged areas.

By 2020, the strategy aims to provide 100 percent of medicines for treatment and meet 20 percent of material demands of national medicine production. Domestically produced vaccines will be sufficient for the expanded vaccination programme and meet 30 percent of the needs of paid vaccination.

The pharmacy industry will be orientated to developing the production of pharmaceutical chemistry and vaccines, and looking to merge, acquisition and scale extension as ways to increase its competitiveness.

The medicine distribution system will be formed modernly, professionally and effectively, covering the mountainous areas in the North, Central North, Central South-Central Highlands, South East and South West regions.

From now to 2020, with a vision to 2030, the industry will strengthen the management over medicine quality and strictly deal with the production, import, circulation, distribution and provision of fake and low-quality medicines.

In the future, the State will invest in projects to establish national biology and biosimilar research centres.-VNA