Vietnam Dengue Summit 2025: Advancing Comprehensive Actions for Effective Dengue Control 

The Vietnam Dengue Summit 2025 (VDS 2025), held on 28–29 November 2025, was organized by the Pasteur Institute Ho Chi Minh City in collaboration with Takeda Vietnam.  

The event brought together more than 700 delegates, including representatives from Ministry of Heath, World Health Organization, leading experts from health authorities, research institutes, hospitals, universities, and international organizations. As a large-scale national scientific conference, VDS 2025 focused on multidimensional strategies to strengthen dengue prevention and control – one of Vietnam’s most pressing public-health challenges today.  

With the theme “Advancing comprehensive actions for effective dengue control”, the summit highlighted key challenges and practical needs in disease management, while discussing strategic solutions aimed at strengthening epidemic preparedness, reducing cases and severe disease, and enhancing the health system’s readiness amid increasingly complex patterns of dengue transmission.  

Vietnam: One of the world’s hotspots of dengue  

In his opening remarks, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Vu Trung, Director of the Pasteur Institute Ho Chi Minh City, emphasized: “Vietnam is one of the world’s dengue hotspots, with unpredictable transmission patterns: dengue is no longer seasonal, persists year-round, and shifts between regions. This reality demands an integrated strategy across surveillance, prevention, clinical management, and risk communication, backed by strong multisectoral collaboration”.  

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Vu Trung, Director of the Pasteur Institute Ho Chi Minh City

Dengue has been listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the top 10 global health threats requiring urgent action. Vietnam has one of the highest incidence rates in Southeast Asia. Each year, the country records more than one hundred thousand of dengue cases. In 2022, the number of cases nearly reached 370,000 – the highest level ever recorded. From January to October 2025, Vietnam reported 110,503 dengue cases and 23 deaths, an increase of 16.8% in case numbers and two additional deaths compared with the same period in 2024.  

Recent epidemiological trends show that dengue is becoming more complex. According to a presentation by Dr. Ngu Duy Nghia, Head of Infectious Disease Control, National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, dengue incidence per 100,000 population is among the highest of all infectious diseases. Currently, the disease is circulating in many regions across the country: mainly in the South, followed by the North, Central and Central Highlands regions. The age distribution has also shifted significantly: in the South, the proportion of patients aged over 15 increased from 18% (1999) to 53% (2022), confirming that dengue is a risk to all age groups, not only children.   

Given dengue’s unpredictability and the lack of a specific antiviral treatment, Prof. Dr. Vu Sinh Nam – Senior Advisor on Dengue, National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Preventive Medicine – stressed that Vietnam can only control dengue effectively by moving from passive response to proactive prevention using a combination of integrated measures. According to WHO guidance, this proactive strategy must be comprehensive: encompassing vector control, epidemiological surveillance, behavior-change communication, standardized clinical management, and vaccination as part of proactive prevention. A sustained combination of these elements, he noted, will reduce outbreak risk and prevent severe cases in the community.  

Mr. Benjamin Ping, General Manager of Takeda Vietnam

At the summit, Mr. Benjamin Ping, General Manager of Takeda Vietnam, shared: “Whilst dengue awareness is high, our research suggests that the general public may not fully understand the risk and severity associated with dengue. From a risk perspective, Vietnam records around 100,000 dengue cases every year. Dengue occurs year round, across the country from south to north, and affects all age groups - children, adults and the elderly. From a severity perspective, dengue can lead to hospitalization, during which parents may have to miss work and children could miss school for an extended period. He also highlighted that the burden of dengue goes beyond health and well-being and can create a substantial financial and economic strain on families and on society as a whole.  

With no specific treatment available for dengue today, prevention is critical. This includes vector control, effective risk communication, robust surveillance and access to dengue vaccination which is now available in Vietnam. Takeda’s dengue vaccine has been recommended by the WHO for use in countries with a high disease burden. This vaccine has been approved in 41 countries, with more than 21 million doses distributed globally.  

Four pillars of a comprehensive dengue-control strategy  

This year’s summit revolved around four key pillars of dengue control: communication, clinical management, proactive prevention, and predictive modeling. These themes were reflected throughout the two-day program on 28 and 29 November through a series of capacity-building activities, scientific reports, and in-depth discussions.  

On 28 November, the pre-conference sessions focused on connecting experts while strengthening scientific research capacity, featuring three parallel sessions on Vietnam’s dengue outlook, scientific data presentation skills, and scientific writing. The scientific exhibition and poster presentations contributed to expanding knowledge sharing and reinforcing the scientific value of the summit. Nearly 30 research groups from specialized institutes, universities, and hospitals nationwide presented diverse topics ranging from epidemiology, prevention, and treatment to community health education on dengue fever.  

The plenary session on 29 November offered a comprehensive and strategic perspective for dengue control. Experts updated key trends and shared practical lessons from real-world implementation. The program showcased a proactive prevention model from Argentina, a Latin American country heavily affected by dengue, providing valuable references for developing solutions tailored to Vietnam’s context.  

The summit also featured the launch of the monograph “Dengue – Supporting capacity building for Vietnam’s medical workforce” aimed at strengthening professional capacity at the grassroots level. The plenary session additionally highlighted recent scientific advances, including the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in dengue surveillance and forecasting, opening new avenues that may support dengue prevention in the future.  

Alongside the plenary session, the summit featured in-depth discussions on three main themes: dengue communication in the digital era, clinical management of dengue, and proactive prevention and dengue epidemiological forecasting. These sessions created a forum for experts and frontline healthcare workers to exchange knowledge, helping promote a multisectoral approach to dengue response.  

Multisectoral collaboration: A strong foundation for dengue control in Vietnam  

VDS 2025 reflects collaborative efforts in controlling Dengue amid a changing climate that is making the disease increasingly unpredictable and contributing to its status as the fastest-spreading mosquito-borne infectious disease.  

The event brought together experts from regional Pasteur Institutes and the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, provincial Centers for Disease Control (CDCs), medical universities, healthcare centers, hospitals across the country, and international organizations, forming a collaborative network that helps the health system better anticipate and respond to emerging risks.  

Experts at the summit agreed that effective dengue control requires comprehensive efforts across preventive health, clinical care, communication, and community engagement to reduce disease burden.  

These efforts align toward shared objectives: reducing case numbers, lowering mortality, preventing large-scale outbreaks, and strengthening community participation in prevention. To achieve these goals, proactive prevention, including vaccination, is playing an increasingly important role in reducing disease burden and helping the health system respond more effectively to potential outbreaks.  

The Summit concluded with a unified direction for action, reflecting the close collaboration among stakeholders and a strong commitment to advancing scientific progress and integrated approaches that will help Vietnam strengthen the effectiveness of its dengue-control efforts.  

Source: Vietnam Business Forum