Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong said that in 2023, to ensure vaccine sources for the Expanded Immunization Program, the Ministry has built a state budget estimate to purchase vaccines.
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| Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong provides information related to ensuring vaccine sources for the Expanded Immunization Program in 2023. (Source: VGP) |
At the regular Government press conference in May 2023 held on the afternoon of June 3, organized by the Government Office, the press asked questions to the leaders of the Ministry of Health regarding ensuring vaccine sources for the Expanded Immunization Program.
Regarding this issue, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong informed that over the past years, the Ministry of Health has implemented an expanded immunization program with 10 dangerous infectious diseases for children and women nationwide.
Although in early 2022, the Covid-19 epidemic affected the implementation of health programs in many localities, including the expanded immunization program, the Ministry and provinces have stepped up vaccination, organized catch-up vaccinations, implemented additional vaccinations for children under 1 year old, and implemented a number of large-scale supplementary vaccination campaigns in 32 high-risk provinces.
With a large number of children in high-risk areas being regularly vaccinated, vaccination and supplementary vaccines have contributed to controlling infectious diseases.
The Ministry of Health has also reviewed the source of vaccines from 2022 to present. For domestically produced vaccines, enough vaccines have been supplied for 2022 and will last until July 2023. Hepatitis B vaccine and tuberculosis vaccine will be enough until August 2023, and Japanese encephalitis vaccine will be enough until the end of September 2023. Measles vaccine, measles-rubella vaccine, and bOPV will be enough until July 2023; tetanus and polio vaccines currently available will be enough until the end of 2023. For imported 5-in-1 vaccines, there will be enough until early 2023.
Deputy Minister Nguyen Thi Lien Huong added that with the leadership and attention of the Party, State, National Assembly, Government, Prime Minister and the support of ministries, branches, localities, the health sector with the highest determination is focusing on removing difficulties and obstacles, specifically:
In the 2016-2020 period, implementing the Population Health Target Program for the 2016-2020 period, the Ministry of Health was allocated central budget funds to place orders for 09 domestically produced vaccines. These vaccines have only one domestic manufacturer and these are units under the Ministry of Health, so the Ministry has implemented an ordering mechanism. For imported vaccines, the Ministry of Health has implemented a procurement mechanism through UNICEF.
In the period of 2021-2022, according to the Law on Public Investment (amended) in 2019, there is no longer a Health and Population Target Program, but only a number of activities are integrated into the expenditure content of the 3 national target programs for the period of 2021-2025 and there is no content on vaccine purchase, the remaining contents are converted into regular tasks of ministries, central agencies and localities.
Therefore, in order to have a suitable roadmap when converting the mechanism from purchasing with the central budget to transferring to localities for implementation, the National Assembly issued Resolution No. 129/2020 on central budget allocation in 2021, accordingly, the Ministry of Health is assigned the estimated source from the central budget to implement procurement to supply vaccines for the Expanded Immunization Program to ensure for 2 years 2021, 2022 and overlap the first months of 2023.
In 2023, to remove difficulties and obstacles for localities, it is necessary to continue purchasing vaccines for the Expanded Immunization Program as in previous years. The Ministry of Health has prepared the 2023 state budget estimate and proposed to allocate funds for the Ministry of Health to purchase vaccines for the Expanded Immunization Program.
Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Lien Huong also informed that the Ministry has submitted to the Government a proposal and draft resolution on this content. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha have strongly directed the Ministry of Health to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to arrange funding and the central budget in 2023 to implement procurement according to regulations as in previous years.
The Ministry of Health has compiled enough vaccine needs of 63 provinces and has directed vaccine supply units to prepare for the work according to regulations. At the same time, the Government and the National Assembly's Supreme Supervisory Delegation on Covid-19 prevention and control resources and grassroots health and preventive medicine have agreed to submit to the National Assembly for permission to continue implementing the national expanded immunization program and supplement the content of allocating central budget resources for implementation.
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