Hanoi (VNA) - Disease prevention and control is the main duty of thehealth sector this year, thus the sector will actively conduct preventivemeasures and provide vaccinations in high-risk areas.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien made the statement in a nationwideonline conference on June 11.

The conference, connecting nearly 700 districts and towns in 63 provinces andcities, aimed to implement plans covering diseases prevention and control andsafe vaccinations. It also updated professional guidance for district-levelhealth centres.

Speaking at the conference, Tien said vaccinations were one of the mostimportant measures to prevent dangerous infectious diseases.

Thanks to vaccination programmes over the past 30 years, many dangerousinfectious diseases had been eliminated.

Vietnam successfully eliminated polio in 2000 and tetanus from birth in 2005.The results had been maintained until now.

Other infectious diseases such as measles, diphtheria and whooping cough causedepidemics many years ago. Now they have been brought under control thanks toregular vaccinations. Vietnam is striving to eliminate malaria, measles, rabiesand control rubella, said Tien.

Experts from the Ministry of Health (MoH) said new dangerous diseases fromother countries could enter Vietnam, and domestic diseases such ashand-foot-mouth, measles and dengue fever could worsen due to climate change,urbanisation, population density and emigration.

According to the experts disease prevention faces challenges because thecountry does not have specialised medicines and vaccines for measles andhand-foot-mouth disease.

Moreover, citizens’ awareness of disease prevention is not high enough. Somegroups of residents do not collaborate with local authorities and the healthsector in preventing the spread of disease, and do not actively implementmeasures to ensure personal and environmental hygiene. Some residents refusedto give their children vaccinations.

Minister Tien said the Government issued decrees on vaccinations whereas theMoH promulgated guidance circulars. These provided important legal foundationscreating good conditions for vaccination work.

During the conference, experts from the National Hospital for TropicalDiseases, the National Paediatrics Hospital, the National Institute of Hygieneand Epidemiology (NIHE) and other hospitals provided information on supervising,treating and preventing several dangerous diseases such as dengue fever andhand-foot-mouth. They updated attendees on new treatments and emergency aid forpatients suffering side-effects after receiving a vaccination.

Associate professor Tran Nhu Duong, deputy director of the NIHE, said forinfectious diseases, prevention should be the focus.

Local authorities should set up preventive plans based on their climate andgeographic conditions, and prepare enough medicines.

Grassroots-level medical centres could classify patients – who should behospitalised and who can be treated as outpatients – to reduce side effects andfatalities, he said. — VNA