Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu headed a Vietnamese delegation to attend ASEAN-related health meetings in Singapore from July 21-24.

At the 10th ASEAN Health Ministers’ Meeting on July 22, Trieu delivered a speech, highlighting Vietnam’s achievements in expanding and upgrading its healthcare networks at all levels, controlling and stamping out a wide range of dangerous diseases, stepping up the application of scientific-technological advances and providing medicines and medical equipment.

People from all parts of the country have been provided with better health care services and most of the common targets about people’s health have exceeded those of nations that have the same per capita income as Vietnam , he said.

Vietnam proposed the selection of June 15 as ASEAN Dengue Day in order to enhance political commitments and encourage society to participate further in the fight against the disease.

Trieu told the participants that Vietnam worked out a dengue prevention and control project, which promotes the engagement of the community and inter-sectoral cooperation. The project is estimated to cost 1.9 million USD.

The ministers adopted a regional strategic framework on healthcare development for the 2010-2015 period and a joint statement, aimed at boosting cooperation within the bloc and mobilise all available resources in the field.

Trieu joined his counterparts from the 10 ASEAN member countries, China , Japan and the Republic of Korea (RoK) in the 4th ASEAN Health Ministers Meeting Plus Three on July 23.

The ministers focused discussions on the healthcare system’s requirements for treating infectious and non-infectious diseases, ways of coping with consequences of climate change, natural disasters and catastrophes, as well as Vietnam ’s initiative on the ASEAN Dengue Day. They also approved a joint statement of the meeting.

At the 3 rd ASEAN Health Ministers’ Meeting Plus China on the same day, the ministers agreed to beef up cooperation in traditional medicines, accomplishing the Millennium Development Goals, preventing and combating infectious and non-infectious diseases, managing medical emergency systems and setting up a centre to forecast and share information about health risks.

Trieu shared Vietnam’s experiences in using traditional medicines and urged the regional countries to accelerate studies and apply traditional medicines to health care services.

Two days earlier, the Vietnamese minister attended an East Asian dialogue forum on health care policies./.