Vietnam’s health care sector is stepping up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve service quality.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has said though social lives have slowed down, those involved in COVID-19 prevention and control and administrations at all levels must speed up work and take more drastic actions to combat the pandemic.

The outbreak of the new coronavirus has worsened critical blood shortages encountered by hospitals nationwide after the Tet holiday, as local people have been discouraged from joining blood drives.

The Ministry of Health on February 8 launched a subweb on its news portal and a mobile app on the acute respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus (nCoV) to support the prevention and control of the disease.

After HCMC authorities launched an ‘anti-plastic waste’ program, producers and distributors drew up long-term programs to reduce plastic waste.

More than 10 million people were yet to be covered by health insurance as of May 2019, it was reported at an online discussion on sustainable development of health insurance held by the Government portal on June 25.

Viet Nam still faces long-term threats including A/H7N9 bird flu and new infectious diseases such as Ebola, Zika, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and other problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and unsafe food.

 VietNamNet Bridge – Last week, a young girl in Dak Lak Province in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands had her leg amputated due to onset of caseation after she was treated in a hospital in the province.

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In 2013, a series of "shocking" incidents and scandals occurred in the health sector. The worst case is the one that is widely known by Vietnamese as “Cat Tuong,” in which a plastic surgeon threw the body of a female customer into the Red River.

VietNamNet Bridge - The gap in the level of expertise among physicians is increasingly widening, breaking the structure of the current health care system in Vietnam, which is divided by levels.

VietNamNet Bridge - The structure of the health sector is disturbed and it no longer fits the current situation (the half-subsidized health sector operating in the market economy).