NCDs including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease, are collectively responsible for almost 73 percent of all deaths worldwide or 380 million people annually, according to the World Health Organization.
Of the diseases, heart disease is the culprit of 30 percent of deaths in the Southeast Asian country. Worse, of five Vietnamese adults, one has high blood pressure and of 20 Vietnamese adults, one has diabetes.
Therefore, at present, approximately 12 million people have high blood pressure and 3 million people have diabetes.
Notwithstanding, the proportion of people aged from 18 to 69 have been diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure are 31,1 percent and 43.1 percent respectively while it is 28.9 percent and 13.6 percent of diabetes and high blood pressure patients respectively are treated in medical clinics in districts.
Over 70 percent of patients in hospitals suffer NCDs.
Professor Luong Ngoc Khue, Director of Medical Management Department pointed out that unhealthy lifestyles including smoking, unhealthy food diet, inactivity, overweight and obesity, alcohol and stress are causes of NCDs.
Moreover, the surge of people suffering NCDs lately is because grass-root medical institutions are not good enough to treat them. Shortage of personnel and equipment in these institutions and bad services can’t satisfy patients’ demand.
Subsequently, to improve the role of district medical clinics in taking care of people’s healthcare task, the decree 20-NQ/TW set a goal that more than 90 percent of residents will be taken care while 95 percent of district clinics can treat some of NCDs by 2025.
As per the decree, by 2030, more than 95 percent of the population will be look after and all grass-root clinics can cure NCDs.
In 2015, the Prime Minister issued the decision 376/QD for the national NCDs prevention strategies for the period 2015 - 2025. In 2018, the Ministry of Health issued the decision on increasing treatment of high blood pressure and diabetes by setting up family doctors in district clinics.
Moreover, as per the ministry’s decision, by 2019, all small clinics can detect early and treat high blood pressure and diabetes by family doctors. By 2020, at least 40 percent of adults aged 40 up will be measured blood pressure monitoring and diagnosed the risk of diabetes.
