Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung urged the health sector to helpoverstrained hospitals and improve the quality of treatment whenaddressing the sector’s video conference to launch its 2013 tasks inHanoi on January 24.

He asked the sector to concentrate ondeploying a nation-wide health insurance programme to enable poor andnear-poor people to get insured when going to hospital, and reformingadministrative procedures to make treatment easier for everyone.

The Government leader also requested that the sector should addressgender imbalance and improve public awareness of family planning anddisease prevention.

In 2012, the health sectormade improvements in caring for people’s health. A Vietnamese person nowenjoys a lifespan of 73 years. Vietnam is among a few countriesthat achieved its millennium development goals, including those relatingto the reduction of under-1 and under-5 fatalities and malnutritionahead of schedule.

The healthcare system has sofar been expanded to all levels, from the State to grassroots. To date,100 percent of communes and over 90 percent of hamlets have medicalworkers with 72 percent of communes being cared by doctors. Up to 95percent of communal healthcare centres have midwives or pediatricphysicians.

Around 68 percent of the population had health insurance in 2012, which doubled the number recorded in 2001.

The number of healthcare workers for 10,000 people rose from 29.2 in 2001 to 34.4 in 2012.

In addition, high technologies have been applied successfully, makingthe healthcare system comparable to developed countries in the region.

However, overcrowded hospitals, unsound policies to getvarious economic sectors involved in public healthcare programmes andhigh hospital fee still remain, posing difficulties for the sector toovercome.-VNA