Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam has sharedits experience in preventing and controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and lessons tomake the initial success in treating the disease, as well as upcomingorientations of its Ministry of Health (MoH) for the work.  

Addressing a forum onfuture health trends hosted by the National University of Singapore via a videoconference on November 18, Associate Professor PhD Luong Ngoc Khue, Director of the Department of Medical Examination and Treatmentunder the MoH, said Vietnam's initial and positive success in diseaseprevention, treatment and control was thanks to great efforts of the wholepolitical system, society, people and partners.

Vietnam has developedstrategies and plans to respond to disease situations, organisedtreatment, management and caring at all levels, managed reports on the numberof COVID-19 cases and regularly updated professional guidelines, Khue noted.

It has also built regulationson equipment, drugs and medical consumables for COVID-19 treatment units, established testingsystems at medical examination and treatment facilities, and implemented the assessmentof human resources working in resuscitation and infection, and providedtraining courses to improve their expertise.

In addition, thecountry also set up mobile teams to provide regular support to localities inthe work and an online centre for supporting COVID-19 treatment, while regularlymonitoring and supervising the implementation of safe hospital criteria in preventing the pandemic, he added.

In the time to come, Vietnam will continue tofocus on both disease and economic development, with its prioritygiven to the development of a Tele-Medicine Network to improve the quality ofmedical services, apply information technology in disease prevention andcontrol and treatment, Khue said.

Attention will be also paid to reducing hospital overloading and cross-infection at health facilities, he went on.

Participants to theforum mainly focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response of health systems,especially difficulties to and challenges to allocating resources, includingfinancial ones; major policy changes; and recommendations for public - privatepartnership.

Application of informationtechnology and digital platforms in health systems such as tele-consult,tele-monitoring, and drug delivery to increase efficiency and reduce costs for healthsystems were also put on table.

The forum is rotated annually in Asia.  Vietnamhosted the event in 2016 and 2018.

This year’s forum saw the participation of healthexperts from Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan (China), India, Indonesia, the Philippines,and Bangladesh./.