Hanoi (VNA) - Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam urged medical facilitiesnationwide to step up preventive health care services and ensure adequatevaccines to prevent the spread of epidemics such as measles and dengue fever.

Localities should allocate more money to reach the target of spending 30 percentof health care service’s national budget on preventive medicine, he said at aworking session with medical agencies on March 21.

He also urged medical centre to play an active role in applying technology tomodernise healthcare records and medical check-ups to reduce waiting times.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said technology application is thebiggest challenge the sector needs to address. The ministry will step uptechnology application in the future to connect medicine supplying facilitiesand launch electronic personal health records.

In the past, local hospitals applied new advanced techniques including tissuetransplants, and successful lung transplants. The ministry has made efforts toimprove health care service and change health care workers’ attitudes towardspatients, heard the meeting.

Tien said hospital overcrowding can be solved by investing in health careservices at local medical facilities to meet patients’ demand while centralhospitals must focus on developing techniques and quality healthcare to stoppeople travelling abroad for treatment.

However, the Deputy PM pointed out shortcomings at central and local facilitiesthat make the services unable to meet expectations such as poor infrastructure,lack of medical equipment or healthcare workers of low capacity.

To address these shortcomings, he requested the health care sector to improvetheir capacity by making medicine quality better, especially medicine used totreat non-infectious diseases.

Dam praised the health ministry for its efforts to hold national centralisedbidding which helps reduce medicine prices and asked the sector to bring coststo same levels as Malaysia, the country with the lowest prices in ASEAN.

He asked healthcare sector to connect pharmacies to ensure medicinedistribution and preservation. “The medicine quality will not be ensured unlessit is well preserved and transported,” he said.

It aims to better manage prescriptions and selling prescribed medicine, lookingforward to a future of having 100 percent of antibiotics sold withprescriptions by 2020.

Health care insurance costs should be adjusted in accordance with people’sincome and must be relevant with service quality. The health ministry mustincrease the health care coverage for students as well, he said.-VNA