Vietnam to Prioritize Health Care in Islands

Vietnam will prioritize improving health care for its coastal areas and islands, state media reported, quoting Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu. The MoH will issue medical standards for marine industries and offer incentives to attract health workers for coastal and islands, the VietnamNet online newspaper cited the minister as saying on the occasion of the country’s Doctors’ Day (Feb 27).  The authorities plan to improve training marine medical specialists with well-equipped schools and study the health conditions of workers in marine industries until 2020, the minister said. Vietnam has more than 3,260 km of coastline and thousands of islands, where health care services are underdeveloped. The country is targeting to raise proportion of the sea-borne economy to account 50% of the country’s GDP by 2020.