New Public-Private Partnership to Strengthen Primary Healthcare in Vietnam

HANOI, Vietnam, May 21, 2019 /3BL Media/– A new public-private partnership, comprising the Vietnamese Ministry of Health, and three other founding members, i.e. World Economic Forum (WEF), Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care and Novartis could transform primary healthcare in Vietnam. As announced by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health, this innovative public-private partnership will help deliver on the Ministry of Health’s objectives the Vietnamese Ministry of Health by strengthening existing primary care demonstration projects in 30 provinces. Learnings from these projects will be applied to scale up model nationwide. The Working Group will build an action plan which will include agreed upon objectives and milestones and overall strategy.

The Working Group for Primary Healthcare Transformation will be open to any organization in the public, private and non-profit sector, as well as institutions, agencies, civic society, etc. which has shown a long-term commitment to improving health in Vietnam. It will aim to ensure that fragmented health investments and initiatives work in a much more coordinated way. Importantly, it will not only look at diagnosis and treatment, but also make major investments in prevention, particularly of the chronic diseases which now cause over three-quarters of deaths in Vietnam. The collaboration could effectively support the country’s aim to achieving Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) by 2030.

The Vietnamese government has prioritized the development of a robust primary healthcare system to achieve UHC and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SGD3 on health.

“Building on our work in Vietnam and the Asian region, we are keen to bring our expertise to this new partnership,” said Dr. Harald Nusser, Head of Novartis Social Business. “By helping strengthen primary care and contributing to measuring the impact the new model has on the quality of care delivered to Vietnamese patients, I believe Novartis can support the government in achieving SDG3.”

The formation of the Working Group for Primary Healthcare Transformation was discussed at the Primary Healthcare Partnership Dialogue in Hanoi on May 16.

For more information, see the media release by the Ministry of Health of Vietnam (in Vietnamese)

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