Nghe An develops a fair, quality and effective health care system

Health Department leaders visited and gave gifts to patients.

Many outstanding achievements

With the attention of the Party and the State, the Ministry of Health, the Provincial Party Committee, the People's Council, the Provincial People's Committee and other departments and branches, in 2019, the Nghe An Health sector successfully completed the targets of protecting, caring for and improving people's health. Specifically, during the year, although many localities in the country had major epidemics, in Nghe An, thanks to proactive prevention and control, no major and dangerous epidemics occurred. In the province, only a few small epidemics appeared but were promptly detected early, surrounded and controlled.

With consensus and efforts to overcome difficulties, the health sector has achieved and exceeded all key targets set out such as population - family planning, reproductive health care, HIV/AIDS prevention, tuberculosis and malaria control. The basic legal targets have all met and exceeded the set plan: Number of doctors/10,000 people reached 8.2; rate of commune health stations with doctors reached 90%; rate of hospital beds/10,000 people reached 34; birth rate decreased by 0.3‰; rate of malnourished children under 5 years old below 17%...

Leaders of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee and Department of Health inspected epidemic prevention and control work at the Northwest Regional General Hospital.

In 2019, Nghe An health sector focused on grassroots health. The sector organized many inspection teams to operate at 9 district health centers, 26 commune health stations and a number of district-level hospitals. The inspection contents included building model herbal medicine gardens, green - clean - beautiful medical facilities; controlling infections, preventing epidemics, managing non-communicable diseases; re-evaluating 93 communes that have met the set of criteria for over 3 years. In addition, the sector has invested in developing commune health stations in terms of infrastructure, equipment and human resources to meet work requirements.

To improve the quality of medical examination and treatment, the health sector has established a quality management council, organized training activities, workshops, experience sharing conferences, and 5S competitions (Screening, arrangement, cleanliness, care, readiness). At this time, all public and non-public hospitals in the province have really changed their mindset in implementing hospital quality management activities; the quality of medical examination and treatment has improved, and the satisfaction of patients and medical staff has significantly improved.

In medical examination and treatment units, the implementation of the financial autonomy and self-responsibility regime according to Decree 43/2006/ND-CP has helped units have many measures to increase revenue and save expenses for investment and development. This has helped units have conditions to research and apply many new techniques such as: Neurovascular anastomosis, percutaneous nephrolithotomy using small tunnels, joint replacement surgery, endoscopic surgery specializing in cardiovascular, surgical, obstetrics, ENT, etc.

Retrograde lithotripsy with Laser at Vinh City General Hospital. Photo: Tu Thanh

A great success of the health sector is that during the year, it has carried out the work of streamlining the organizational structure and restructuring the staff of civil servants and public employees to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations. Specifically, it has advised the Provincial People's Committee to establish the Provincial Center for Disease Control, Nghe An Dermatology Hospital... The work efficiency after the reorganization is very good, especially at the Nghe An Provincial Center for Disease Control.

Difficulties and challenges

In recent times, the Nghe An health sector has achieved many outstanding results, but the shortcomings, difficulties and challenges are not small, especially at the present time. At this time, the biggest challenge of the Nghe An health sector is facing the risk of the Covid-19 epidemic. Since the beginning of the year, there have been more than 80,000 people infected worldwide, more than 2,700 deaths. In Vietnam, there have been 16 people infected and so far all have been cured. In Nghe An, at this time, the epidemic is well controlled, no cases of infection have been detected. However, it must be said that the Covid-19 epidemic is becoming more and more unpredictable. Besides China, South Korea is the country with the highest number of infections and increasing rapidly; some countries have rapid mortality rates such as Iran, Japan, Italy...

In addition to Covid-19, Nghe An health care is also facing many other difficulties and challenges. Disease patterns are changing, non-communicable diseases tend to increase, the risk of epidemic outbreaks; new epidemics, strange diseases are difficult to predict, with high mortality rates. Meanwhile, local counterpart funding for the Health - Population Target Program is limited; projects have had funding cuts, affecting the implementation and operation of programs funded by the project.

The challenges in medical examination and treatment are not small. The management mechanism of the Social Insurance is still not synchronous in management, leading to difficulties in the implementation of payment for patients; professional and technical development at medical examination and treatment facilities at the grassroots level is not commensurate with the medical examination and treatment needs of the people, especially in mountainous areas; the rate of patients being transferred to higher levels is still high, leading to high treatment costs and increased use of the health insurance fund for medical examination and treatment.

Determined to implement solutions

2020 is the final year of implementing the Resolution of the 18th Provincial Party Congress. The entire Nghe An Health sector will strive with the highest determination to complete the set targets, continuing to firmly pursue the goal of a fair, quality and effective health care system.

Health check for people in mountainous areas.

In the context of the complicated and unpredictable developments of the Covid-19 epidemic, the health sector in particular and the entire Party, army and people will continue to carry out the prevention and control work well in accordance with the spirit of the Party, the State and the Ministry of Health: Implementing epidemic prevention and control with the spirit of not being subjective, negligent or surprised. Nghe An health sector closely follows the principles of epidemic prevention: Thorough prevention; earliest detection and detection; immediate isolation and quarantine; tight containment and containment; suppression and complete suppression.

In addition to the Covid-19 epidemic, in the coming time, the health sector will continue to focus on implementing preventive measures, forecasting, closely monitoring epidemics, especially outbreaks, promptly handling and controlling epidemics, preventing outbreaks and widespread spread, especially dangerous and emerging epidemics; performing vaccination well to maintain a high rate of expanded vaccination, well managing service vaccination activities, and strictly implementing vaccination safety procedures.

Nghe An provincial leaders inspect the quarantine area to respond to the epidemic. Photo: Document

In medical examination and treatment, the sector will focus on improving the quality of medical examination and treatment services at all levels, especially high-tech, ensuring that all people have access to convenient medical examination and treatment services of increasingly high quality; developing a system of medical examination and treatment that is both specialized at provincial hospitals; both specialized and popular at district and commune levels to reduce the burden on upper levels... During the year, the sector will advise on the development of the Project "Building and developing high-tech healthcare to make Vinh city a medical center of the North Central region in the period of 2021 - 2025", to submit to the Provincial People's Committee for approval and implementation.

Inspection of non-public medical and pharmaceutical practice.

In other areas, Nghe An Health sector will continue to strictly control the implementation of legal regulations on food safety, especially regulations on food safety conditions in collective kitchens, establishments providing ready-to-eat meals and bottled drinking water; promote activities to improve population quality; maintain a reasonable birth rate, control the rapid increase in the sex ratio at birth, meet the people's needs for reproductive health care services and family planning... strengthen inspection of the implementation of professional regulations on pharmaceuticals at establishments producing, trading and using drugs; strengthen the work of testing the quality of drugs and cosmetics.