Vietnam has imported 80% of medical equipment, a survey on 1,000 hospitals across the country conducted by the Ministry of Health’s Institute of Medical Equipment and Works showed. The Southeast Asian country spends hundreds of billions of dong a year on importing advanced medical devices to meet the treatment and check-up demand, the survey was quoted by the Dat Viet newspaper as saying Jan. 19. Vice Head of the institute Cao Van Diem said that the domestic medical equipment production sector is weak. Most of 600 locally-made medical devices are hand-held tools, sickbeds, syringes and rubber gloves and some of the devices have low quality. Lack of technical staff was blamed for the situation, the ministry said, adding that only 6% of workers in the medical equipment production sector now are engineers and 35% of them are technicians.
