Minister of Health: 15-minute presentation to select Deputy Minister

There will be two candidates for the vacant position of Deputy Minister of Health. After the voting rounds, each person will have 15 minutes to present their project.

Reporting to the Prime Minister's Working Group this morning on personnel organization, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien emphasized that the appointment process at the Ministry is very strict, public, democratic, transparent and relatively cautious.

According to regulations from previous terms, the Minister of Health appoints heads and deputy heads of affiliated and subordinate units based on decisions of the Central Executive Committee and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

For units under the Ministry, the positions of department and division chief and deputy chief must go through a two-round process of indeterminate voting before being approved by the Executive Committee.

Minister and Head of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung led the Prime Minister's working group to work at the Ministry of Health this morning.

“For the deputy minister level, after the indeterminate vote, the Party Committee of the 63 Departments of Health must also vote in two rounds of key units to select two candidates. Each person will then have 15 minutes to present their project,” the Minister of Health informed.

After that, if the deputy minister is appointed, he will have to go through 3 more rounds of voting, including 1 round of key officials, 1 round of the Party Standing Committee and finally a secret ballot in the Executive Committee.

At affiliated hospitals, the appointment is similar based on planning, taking a vote of confidence for key staff and the unit's Party Committee before submitting it to the Ministry of Health for discussion and secret ballot.

There is no evidence to accuse the department head.

Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said that regarding the accusation against Mr. Pham Van Tac, Director of the Department of Organization and Personnel, regarding the appointment of leaders of the Central Eye Hospital, the Ministry of Health has established an inspection team.

After nearly 2 months of inspection, the Ministry of Health has not yet announced its conclusion, but the inspection team of the Party Committee of the Central Agencies Bloc has joined the investigation, so the Ministry is temporarily waiting for the official conclusion from the Central team.

The conclusion of the Ministry of Health is that the content of the accusation is unsubstantiated. "Many newspapers published the recent accusations which are incorrect because there are no results yet, we need to wait for the inspection conclusion," Ms. Tien said, adding that this conclusion has been sent to the Party Committee of the Government and other relevant agencies.

Regarding the delayed appointment of directors of Viet Duc, Friendship, and Central Eye hospitals as reported by the press, the Minister of Health said there were two reasons.

First, because these hospitals themselves could not find out who was better after many rounds of voting.

Second, the Ministry of Health once submitted to the Politburo a pilot project to recruit key officials at affiliated units, which was approved, but when asking for instructions, the Government said it had to wait.

“We waited for more than a year but were not approved, so we then requested re-appointment according to the old process. That is why there was a delay,” Minister Tien explained.

Prime Minister reminds of internal rectification

Head of the Working Group, Minister, Head of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung conveyed 8 notes of the Prime Minister to the Ministry of Health.

The most prominent of these is hospital overload. According to the Government's policy, hospitals must stop sharing beds in 2015, and 38 central hospitals have committed to this.

However, due to pressure, the Ministry of Health later lowered the limit to 24-48 hours.

“However, in reality, according to feedback, in large hospitals such as Bach Mai, Viet Duc, K… the phenomenon of sharing beds still exists and does not stop at 2 patients sharing 1 bed,” Minister Mai Tien Dung cited.

He also conveyed the Prime Minister's opinion on rectifying the industry's personnel work, requesting the Ministry to pay attention to political and ideological education and internal solidarity; if any, it should be considered, reviewed, rectified, and a public conclusion should be made soon.

In addition, the problem of disbursement of investment capital is too low. The Ministry of Planning and Investment said that the health sector was invested 20,000 billion VND to improve hospitals but could not disburse, only 1 hospital in Ho Chi Minh City received the implementation money.

According to VNN