Acting Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long at the meeting (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – During the 2021-2025 period, the health sector will push strong and comprehensive reform to meet rising public demand for health care and protection, striving to achieve high rankings in health care as compared to ASEAN and Western Pacific nations.
Acting Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long made the statement at a meeting held by the Standing Board of the NationalAssembly’s Committee on Socio-Economic Affairs in Hanoi onSeptember 17 to review the implementation of socio-economic targets and Statebudget estimate in nine months of this year and propose targets for 2021 and the2021-2026 period in health care and population field.
He said since the beginningof this year, public health care and protection has seen positive results amidthe COVID-19 pandemic, notably the number of hospital beds per 10,000 population andthe rate of medical insurance participation meeting and surpassing targets assigned by thelegislature.
Thehealth sector is forecast to achieve other goals such as rising average lifeexpectancy, strong decrease in child malnutrition, maternal and childmortalities, and others.
One ofthe outstanding results of the health sector in the past year was improvingpreventive medicine and prevention of dangerous infectious diseases such asEbola and MERS-COV, early discovery and treatment of non-communicable diseases,he said.
However,he also admitted imbalance in health care service accessibility, overload incentral-level hospitals, limited management of private health services, slow publicinvestment disbursement, among others.
In the coming time, the health ministry will improve the capacity of preventive medicine system tocope with contingencies and public health incidents, ensure health security andfood safety, enhance the quality of health check-ups and treatment, increase scientificresearch and adopt modern technology in early discovery, diagnosis andtreatment of diseases, step up research and production of medical equipment andmedicines, he said.
Permanent deputy head of the committee Bui Sy Loi askedleaders of the ministry to collect opinions at the meeting to complete reportsfor submission to the committee’s plenary session and the NA’s upcoming 10th meeting./.
