Geneva (VNA) – Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong has had a meeting with Chief Programme Officer at Gavi Aurelia Nguyen to discuss current and future support for Vietnam under the Vaccine Alliance’s strategy for assisting middle-income countries in the 2021 - 2025 and 2026 - 2030 periods.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva. It was also attended by Ambassador Mai Phan Dung, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, and other international organisations in the Swiss city.
Gavi announced that it is ready to continue helping Vietnam deploy the two new vaccines of pneumococcal and HPV vaccines.
Huong highly valued Gavi and Aurelia Nguyen’s contributions to the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) in Vietnam.
She noted the Ministry of Health will soon complete procedures for receiving Gavi’s rotavirus vaccine support, which will be used together with the locally made Rotavin vaccine to immunise children under one year of age in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The Deputy Minister added that under her instruction, the EPI of Vietnam is working on a dossier proposing Gavi help with deploying the pneumococcal vaccine for children less than one year old, and the cervical cancer vaccine for 11-year-old girls. The proposal will be sent to Gavi this September.
She proposed that Gavi assist Vietnam in deploying new vaccines under the EPI in the next three years.
The official also called on the organisation to continue helping the country improve the vaccination quality and rate amid impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic so as to ensure the sustainability of and maintain vaccination achievements in Vietnam.
Aside from support of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other countries’ governments, Gavi has provided considerable assistance for the EPI in Vietnam for more than 20 years.
It has helped the country with immunisation safety, the deployment of Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, measles prevention and control, and especially the deployment of new vaccines for the EPI such as the ones against five dangerous infectious diseases, the injectable polio vaccine, and the rotavirus vaccine, thus significantly helping to change the structure of childhood diseases in Vietnam./.
