Hanoi: Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha on April 8 requested the Ministry of Health to work with the Vietnam Social Security and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to provide health insurance coverage for all tuberculosis (TB) patients.

Addressing a meeting of the national committee on TB eradication, Ha also asked these units to research plans to pay for testing costs to detect the disease, and conduct centralised bidding to ensure there are enough drugs, medical equipment and supplies for this work.

One of the top tasks of the Health Ministry is to promulgate regulations and professional guidance on prevention, detection and treatment of TB patients from the central to grassroots levels, he stressed.

He assigned the ministry to prepare human resources and medical equipment to implement a national-scale investigation on this disease in 2025, promote international cooperation and technology transfer for rapid and mass TB testing, research the use of traditional medicine in TB treatment a
nd develop applications for TB patients.

Press and media agencies were asked to step up dissemination and raise public awareness about TB, while associations of the elderly, women, youth and farmers need to become the nucleus in implementing local TB prevention and control programmes.

Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated in 2022 that Vietnam had 172,000 new TB patients and about 13,000 died from this disease. It ranked 11th out of the 30 countries burdened with the disease and the highest drug-resistant TB rate globally.

The number of TB patients detected, treated and reported each year only accounts for about 60% of the estimated number./.

Source: Vietnam News Agency