The Ministry of Health on February 27 launched a pilot project to send young doctors to remote and difficult localities nationwide, prioritising 62 poor districts.
Young doctors at the launching ceremony
Many people in mountainous and island areas of Vietnam are currently facing difficulties accessing healthcare services due to the shortage of qualified doctors. Therefore, the Ministry of Health has decided to assign young doctors with regular training and moderately good and excellent graduation degrees to work in the areas.
The distribution of the human resources will depend on the realities in each particular location. Doctors who join the project will be offered preferential treatment during the time they work in remote localities. The working period for female doctors will stand at two years, while male doctors will have to serve three years.
Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said the project was a breakthrough for the health sector, aiming to gradually ensure trained human resources as well as high technologies for remote areas. This was expected to offer more favourable conditions for local people to enjoy healthcare services, helping to restrict the movement of patients from hospitals in localities to nationally-graded medical facilities. It would help to ease serious overcrowding for many big hospitals and mitigate costs for patients.
To Huy Rua, Party Politburo member and Head of the Party Central Committee's Commission for Organisation, hoped the project would also be applied to other sectors including education and economy.
The Ministry of Health will join with localities to work on doctor distribution and integrate the project with poverty reduction programmes.
The first doctors will begin working on the programme from June.
