Medical workers tend to a child contracting Japanese encephalitis virus (Photo: VNA) HCM City (VNA) – The 15th Hospital Management Asia (HMA) conference was opened in Ho Chi Minh City on September 7 with the participation of some 1,000 delegates from 400 hospitals and organisations in 35 countries.
During the two-day event, 104 speakers from 22 countries will share experience at 75 sessions.
They focus on hospitals’ social responsibility, human resources development, improving service quality for internal customers, marketing and public relations, patient safety, improving clinical service quality, customer services, technical infrastructure and medical equipment improvement, hospital governance reforms, and IT application in health care.
Fifty-three collective awards will be presented to the best among 322 quality improvement initiatives. Meanwhile, Vi Nguyet Ho, who founded the Vietnam Nurses Association, will be honoured with the devotion award for her life-long contributions to the nursing in the country.
Speaking at the conference, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said the Vietnamese Government prioritises social welfare programmes and considers promoting health care a prerequisite for the country’s socio-economic development.
Her ministry has strived to ensure fair, effective and quality health care over the past years. There are 1,300 hospitals with 250,000 patient beds in Vietnam at present. They serve over 150 million outpatients and 15 million inpatients while conducting 3 million surgeries every year.
Tien admitted challenges facing the local health care sector and expressed the willingness to learn from other countries’ experience.
The HMA conference is held by the Asian Hospital Federation with a view to sharing experience in hospital management and service improvement among regional and global nations.
Vietnam hosted the HMA conference in HCM City in 2009 and Hanoi in 2012.-VNA
