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| Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha received Ms. Angela Pratt, Chief Representative of the World Health Organization in Vietnam. (Source: VNA) |
On the afternoon of July 18, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha received Ms. Angela Pratt, Chief Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam.
Congratulating Ms. Angela Pratt on her new term in Vietnam, the Deputy Prime Minister highly appreciated the coordinating role of WHO in the context of the world facing many challenges related to the pandemic. WHO's support contributed to helping Vietnam succeed in the fight against Covid-19 and become one of the countries that opened up early after the pandemic.
According to the Deputy Prime Minister, climate change and epidemics such as Covid-19 are one of the measures of the sustainability of the current development model in the world. This shows the urgent need to focus resources to respond to future sustainability challenges.
Lessons from Covid-19 prevention and control show that the world cannot successfully fight the pandemic if there is still a country that has not controlled the pandemic, in which vaccines are the key weapon against the pandemic. Therefore, all countries need to fairly share vaccine resources to successfully fight the pandemic.
The Deputy Prime Minister said that after the pandemic, Vietnam will continue to proactively improve its healthcare system to be able to respond to diseases that may break out in the future. Vietnam hopes that the WHO will support it in responding to new healthcare challenges, especially in improving the capacity of the grassroots healthcare system; at the same time, gradually and fundamentally resolve shortcomings and problems in health insurance policies and public healthcare with the leading role of the State and the active participation of businesses.
The Deputy Prime Minister asked WHO to continue to actively support Vietnam in accessing quality medical products, medicines, biological products, and vaccines at reasonable prices, especially vaccines that are lacking in the expanded immunization program.
Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha discussed with Ms. Angela Pratt a number of specific issues: solutions to cope with diseases arising from environmental and water pollution; prevention and control of tobacco harms; removing obstacles in accessing and transferring technology to produce vaccines, raw materials and finished drugs, drug quality inspection, and centralized drug bidding, etc.
Thanking the Deputy Prime Minister for taking the time to meet her, Ms. Angela Pratt affirmed that WHO and the Vietnamese Government have had a close and effective cooperative relationship for a long time. This is an important foundation for the two sides to continue to solve current difficult issues in the health sector.
In the coming time, WHO will continue to closely coordinate with the Ministry of Health to increase access to vaccines under the expanded immunization program.
The WHO representative highly appreciated and thanked Vietnam for actively participating in future healthcare programs and plans; and committed to implementing goals related to climate change response.
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