Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan of HCM City's Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital is among three people recently honoured by the World Health Organisation for their contribution to the prevention of tuberculosis (TB).
The others include Anne Lenaerts, a professor at Colorado University in the US, and Patience Oduor, who works for a TB vaccine research programme in Kenya.
The awards have been given as part of WHO's activities to mark World TB Day, March 24, which this year focus on individuals around the world who are involved in finding new ways to stop TB, and succeed, and can serve as an inspiration to others.
Lan, 54, head of the hospital's microbiology department, has worked with her staff to develop the quality and effectiveness of the microbiology test centre.
Her group has also been involved in expanding grassroots TB testing and care programmes in the southern region, providing many people living in remote areas access to TB diagnosis and treatment as well as integrating TB care into health systems.
Lan has also been honoured for her innovation in diagnosis of drug-resistant TB which has helped cut the diagnosis time from up to five months to just one or two days.
Lan began her research in 2007 amidst many challenges and within two years, the National TB Prevention Programme adopted her new method.
According to WHO, fully a third of the world's population is infected with TB. It is working to reduce the prevalence rate and cut the morbidity rate by half by 2015.
In Vietnam, the disease continues to spread due to a shortage of human resources and failure to detect new cases during 2007-09.
Around 5,000 people develop multi-drug-resistant TB every year.
The lack of experience among hospital staff, sub-standard medical facilities and lack of cooperation between public and private health care units are blamed for this.
But the National TB Prevention Programme reported that nearly 90 percent of patients receiving proper treatment recover completely.
The programme will implement DOTS (Directly observed treatment, short course) this year, which it hopes will increase the rate of detection and improve treatment methods./.
The others include Anne Lenaerts, a professor at Colorado University in the US, and Patience Oduor, who works for a TB vaccine research programme in Kenya.
The awards have been given as part of WHO's activities to mark World TB Day, March 24, which this year focus on individuals around the world who are involved in finding new ways to stop TB, and succeed, and can serve as an inspiration to others.
Lan, 54, head of the hospital's microbiology department, has worked with her staff to develop the quality and effectiveness of the microbiology test centre.
Her group has also been involved in expanding grassroots TB testing and care programmes in the southern region, providing many people living in remote areas access to TB diagnosis and treatment as well as integrating TB care into health systems.
Lan has also been honoured for her innovation in diagnosis of drug-resistant TB which has helped cut the diagnosis time from up to five months to just one or two days.
Lan began her research in 2007 amidst many challenges and within two years, the National TB Prevention Programme adopted her new method.
According to WHO, fully a third of the world's population is infected with TB. It is working to reduce the prevalence rate and cut the morbidity rate by half by 2015.
In Vietnam, the disease continues to spread due to a shortage of human resources and failure to detect new cases during 2007-09.
Around 5,000 people develop multi-drug-resistant TB every year.
The lack of experience among hospital staff, sub-standard medical facilities and lack of cooperation between public and private health care units are blamed for this.
But the National TB Prevention Programme reported that nearly 90 percent of patients receiving proper treatment recover completely.
The programme will implement DOTS (Directly observed treatment, short course) this year, which it hopes will increase the rate of detection and improve treatment methods./.
