Vietnam - Health, drugs need investment

The Ministry of Health is calling for more investment in healthcare and pharmaceutical production which it considers promising sectors amidst the rapid development of the economy.

Nguyen Viet Hung, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Drug Administration, said both foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic capital sources directed at hospital construction, pharmaceutical research and production, and medical equipment were still limited.

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the country has attracted 76 FDI projects this year worth US$1.1 billion in the healthcare sector as of April.

Pham Le Tuan, director of the ministry's Planning and Finance Department said VND65 trillion ($3 billion) was needed to modernise the country's hospital system.

However, State budget funding allocated by the Government was only equivalent to between 5 and 6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, which was not enough to cover the necessary improvements to health care quality and facilities.

The current hospital system had not met current healthcare needs especially in the context of a rapidly developing economy, Tuan added.

Due to the slow improvement, 30,000 Vietnamese people travelled abroad annually to seek treatment in foreign hospitals at a cost of more than $1 billion, Tuan said.

Deputy Director Hung said domestic pharmaceutical producers only satisfied 50 per cent of the domestic demand for medicine in part because most of the factories were unable to produce high-value remedies.

For these reasons, the country had been forced to spend over $1 billion each year to import medicines, remedies, vaccines as well as production materials from France, India, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, he said.

In 2009, the amount spent on medicine imports reached $1.17 billion, representing an increase of 26.8 per cent over the 2008 figure.

Tuan said the healthcare and pharmaceutical production sectors were "thirsty" for capital and represented attractive and potential fields for both domestic and foreign investors to strongly exploit.

Experts attributed the limitation of investment in these sectors to the lack of preferential policies to encourage investment as well as the shortage of trained and skilled human resources.

Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu stressed that to develop the sectors, there should be a close link among managers, enterprises and scientists.

The Government should work out specific policies to call for investments, create favourable conditions for investors, improve human resource quality, and ensure infrastructure serving the pharmaceutical research and production, and healthcare sectors, Trieu said.

Source: VNS