To ensure preventive healthcare always "runs smoothly"

SGGP 30/05/2023 07:22

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses not only in social governance and administration but also in the primary healthcare and preventive medicine systems. This area, without major events like the pandemic, has long received little attention, and has even been almost "invisible" to a significant portion of the population.

The monitoring results announced on May 29th at the National Assembly showed that spending on grassroots healthcare as a percentage of total social healthcare spending decreased from 32.4% in 2017 to 23.1% in 2019. The proportion of spending on medical examinations and treatment covered by health insurance at the grassroots level reached 34.5% in 2022, with the commune level only reaching 1.7%. The allocation of recurrent expenditures other than salaries for commune health stations remains low, with some localities only receiving 10-20 million VND/station/year, barely enough to cover electricity, water, and administrative costs. Income and benefits for staff are also too low: the support level for village health workers is only 0.3 and 0.5 times the basic salary (equivalent to 447,000 VND and 745,000 VND respectively).

Therefore, it is not surprising that the total number of preventive health care staff from the central to district levels only meets 42% of the human resource needs (a shortage of approximately 23,800 people), while the number of preventive health care workers transferring to other positions or resigning is increasing.

Many National Assembly deputies expressed concern, considering this the biggest challenge facing the health sector at present. Increasing salaries, building new offices, and purchasing equipment are necessary solutions, but they are still insufficient and could even lead to waste if there isn't a genuine strengthening of capacity and creation of more jobs for the entire system, such as treatment (primary healthcare, management of chronic diseases, community first aid, etc.). In the long term, it is necessary to develop and enact relevant laws concerning primary healthcare and preventive medicine.

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/de-y-te-du-phong-luon-chay-tot-post691688.html