Associate Professor Dr. Tang Chi Thuong, Director of the Department of Health of Ho Chi Minh City disclosed that Professor Guy Thwaites put forward the proposal to the Wellcome Foundation - a charitable organization headquartered in the UK which supports discovery research into life, health and wellbeing, and we’re taking on three worldwide health challenges namely mental health, infectious disease and climate and health.
According to Associate Professor Dr. Tang Chi Thuong, within the framework of the working program of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health delegation in the UK, the delegation came to work at the headquarters of the Wellcome Foundation on March 20 in the UK.
One of the main strategies of this organization is ‘Innovative strategies to improve healthcare quality in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), focusing on treating patients with infectious diseases in health systems'. This strategy has two main goals including improvement of the diagnosis and treatment of acute fever by healthcare workers in hospitals or community clinics and improvement of critical illness care for patients with acute diseases in low- and middle-income countries.
Ho Chi Minh City's health sector highly appreciates the practical effects brought about by the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU)'s professional activities in Ho Chi Minh City which have been sponsored by the Wellcome Foundation over the past 30 years. Prof. Guy Thwaites' proposal for forming an innovation incubator in Ho Chi Minh City's medical sector is completely consistent with the city's development orientation to soon become the health care center of the ASEAN region, Associate Professor Dr. Tang Chi Thuong informed.
Previously, in 2023, OUCRU signed a cooperation agreement on a project to support capacity building for the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Disease Control (HCDC) with the goal of improving the effectiveness of prevention and control of infectious diseases in the southern largest city, especially emerging infectious diseases. OUCRU will provide technical expertise and training as support for the development of HCDC. The project has shown a good 30-year partnership between OUCRU, Oxford University and the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health.
Recently, through the OUCRU organization, the Wellcome Foundation continues to support the Ho Chi Minh City health sector with the VITAL project to promote the application of technology to improve resuscitation capacity for infectious diseases.
Vietnam ICU Translational Applications Laboratory (VITAL project) is a unique multidisciplinary project, funded by Wellcome as part of its Innovations for Impact strategy, providing ICU/critical care innovation in resource-limited settings.
The project is carried out in cooperation between Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases with Oxford University, Imperial College London (ICL), King's College London (KCL), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and the University of Melbourne. The project brings together physicians, engineers, physical therapists, computer scientists and social scientists to use new approaches to improve the care of patients with diseases serious problem in low- and middle-income countries, mainly focusing on diseases with high disability and mortality rates.
