US$86Mln for Improving Healthcare System

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has pledged to provide Vietnam with US $86 million to implement a project on assisting its healthcare system in the 2012 – 2016 period.

 

The project has two components: strengthening grassroots healthcare networks and controlling medicine quality and pharmaceutical alerts, said the project’s Director, Dr.Nguyen Hoang Long, Deputy Head of the Planning and Finance Department under the Vietnamese Health Ministry.

 

The fund has approved a grant of US$40 million for the project’s phase one.

 

The project’s first component will be implemented in 15 cities and provinces, focusing on assisting the training of 1,000 doctors, some 6,000 communal healthcare workers, provision of intensive training courses on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, mother and child healthcare, 16,000 medical kits to hamlets, and essential equipment to 80 district medical centers and 678 communal healthcare stations.

 

The second component will center on improving capacity of the National Center for Medicine Information, building a national voluntary reporting system, establishing a response system to foster the safe use of medicines…