(Press-News.org) This interview was conducted in August, released as a Web First, and appears in the November issue of Health Affairs.
Health Affairs has previously published Cheng's interviews with other world health ministers, including Thomas Zeltner of Switzerland (2010) and Chen Zhu of China (2012).
In this interview, Minister Nguyen noted that the Vietnamese parliament has voted to spend about 30 percent of the country's state fund for public health. However, that goal has yet to be reached. She also confirmed that Vietnam's 2008 Law of Health Insurance requires patients use the communal health facility they have registered for through their social health insurance, except in cases of an emergency. If a patient insists on visiting a different facility, the insurance will not cover the service and the patient will need to pay out of pocket for that care.
While the goal of the 2008 law was universal coverage by 2014, Minister Nguyen acknowledged that the goal has not yet been reached, although she noted that about 70 percent of Vietnam's population has enrolled. Participation in social health insurance is mandatory, but the minister also allowed that enforcement has been weak. She said that Vietnam's "master plan" aims for 80 percent by 2020.
Nguyen stated that Vietnam is the first country to successfully control SARS, and the incidence of other infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and TB has declined in the past ten to twenty years. The exception is malaria, which Vietnam had conquered five years ago but is now witnessing a return among migrant workers along the borders with Cambodia and Laos. Minister Nguyen said that drugs for treatment are available and costs for epidemic outbreaks are borne by the government.
When asked about medical training in Vietnam, Minister Nguyen said that it is comparable to that of other nations, with many countries supporting the postgraduate training of new Vietnamese physicians. She said that graduates are free to choose positions in either the public or private sector. While many prefer to work in cities, one training model accepts students with substandard entrance exams into government medical schools in exchange for future service in their native provinces for a minimum of five years. She also noted when asked that over 90 percent of Vietnamese babies are delivered by trained midwives.
Looking ahead at achieving Millennium Development Goals, Minister Nguyen called the greatest difficulty "overcoming the disparities between residents in mountainous areas and members of the minority groups, on the one hand, and the residents of urban areas on the other hand....Infant mortality, maternal and child mortality, and the incidence of malnutrition are still high in some very remote areas, while they are all very low in cities. But on average, for the country as a whole we achieved the goals."
INFORMATION:
INFORMATION:
Health Affairs is the leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published by Project HOPE, the peer-reviewed journal appears monthly in print, online, on mobile and on iPad. Additional and late-breaking material is found at http://www.healthaffairs.org in Web First papers, Health Affairs Blog, Health Policy Briefs, Videos and Podcasts, and more.
Managing childhood asthma is difficult. Rather than giving daily medications -- even when children feel well -- many parents treat asthma only when symptoms become severe. This practice can lead to missed school days, trips to the ER and hospitalizations.
But a novel program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that peer trainers who coach parents over the phone on managing their children's asthma can sharply reduce the number of days the kids experience symptoms. The program also dramatically decreased ER visits and hospitalizations among ...
DUBLIN, Ireland, November 14th, 2014 - TB is an infectious disease that kills 1.5 million people each year, and smoking is the biggest driver of the global TB epidemic. Medical scientists at Trinity College Dublin and St James's Hospital in Ireland have unlocked the mechanism underlying the connection between smoking and Tuberculosis (TB). This discovery will considerably strengthen anti-smoking efforts to control TB and uncovers new therapy and vaccine options for TB. Their research has just been published in the top respiratory Journal, the American Journal of Respiratory ...
Philadelphia, PA (November 14, 2014) -- Sleep apnea may accelerate kidney function decline in diabetic patients with kidney disease, according to a study that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬-16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.
Type 2 diabetes often contributes to the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Because obstructive sleep apnea is common in patients with type 2 diabetes, investigators wonder whether disordered sleep might play a role in the link between diabetes and kidney dysfunction. To investigate, ...
Philadelphia, PA (November 14, 2014) -- Many young patients with chronic conditions don't take their medications correctly, but 2 new studies point to ways to address such medication non-adherence. The studies will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬-16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.
In one study, researchers led by Frederick Kaskel, MD, PhD (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) and Oleh Akchurin, MD (Weill Cornell College of Medicine) looked to see how young patients are using smart phones to help them take their medications. ...
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2014--Quick Response (QR) codes -- the box-shaped symbols that appear on signs, posters, and even business cards -- are a convenient and efficient way of accessing specific web pages with a smartphone or other mobile device. However, new research published today in The Optical Society's (OSA) new high-impact journal Optica, explains how QR codes can do much more.
By adding an array of tiny lenses to an ordinary smartphone, a team of optical engineers from the University of Connecticut has found a way to securely display three-dimensional (3-D) images ...
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have found that screening for Ebola at airports could be an effective method for preventing the spread of the disease into the UK and US, but due to the long incubation period of the virus, screening won't detect all cases.
Published in the Lancet medical journal, the study used a mathematical model to test the probability of infected travellers from West Africa entering the UK and US.
The team, from the University's Institute of Infection and Global Health, examined the current growth rate of the epidemic in West Africa alongside ...
People with bipolar disorder who are being treated with the drug lithium are at risk of acute kidney damage and need careful monitoring, according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.
Lithium is a mainstay treatment for bipolar disorder and it is known that the drug can cause a loss of kidney function. The new research establishes the link between short-term exposure to high levels and potential damage to the kidneys.
It is still not known what the impact of more than a single exposure to high levels ...
Scientists from the University of Liverpool have sequenced the mitochondrial genome in glaucoma patients to help further understanding into the genetic basis for the disease.
Glaucoma is a major cause of irreversible blindness, affecting more than 60 million people worldwide, increasing to an estimated 79.6 million people by 2020. It is thought that the condition has genetic origins and many experiments have shown that new sequencing approaches could help understand how the condition develops.
Studies on primary open-angle glaucoma - the most common form of glaucoma ...
Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of blindness in the western world, affecting around 50 million people. It has been shown that sufferers are genetically predisposed to develop the condition.
One of the most important risk associated genes is called complement factor H (CFH). This encodes a protein called factor H (FH) that is responsible for protecting our eyes from attack by part of our immune system, called the complement system. FH achieves this by sticking to tissues, and when it is present in sufficient quantities it prevents the complement ...
Animal growth is closely regulated by environmental factors such as nutrition. If the nutrition of a growing animal is limited, growth slows down and the eventual size of the animal remains smaller. Insulin-like signaling plays a key role in coordinating growth in response to dietary status in multicellular animals.
Doctoral student Kiran Hasygar and Assistant Professor Ville Hietakangas from the Department of Biosciences and Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, Finland, have now uncovered a new regulatory mechanism coordinating animal growth in response ...
