Denmark, Vietnam continue to improve diabetes diagnosis, treatment

The cooperation will be jointly implemented by the health ministry’s Medical Services Administration (MSA), with technical support from the Danish Embassy in Vietnam and professional and financial support from the Vietnam Pediatric Association and Novo Nordisk Vietnam from June 2024 to June 2026.

The programme will focus activities on facilitating knowledge exchange, strengthening medical training, information exchange and experience sharing on non-communicable diseases, especially diabetes and obesity and developing and updating medical professional guidelines and addressing treatment gaps.

To improve medical capacity for all levels, including non-communicable disease prevention, the MSA has coordinated with the Danish Embassy in Vietnam on a programme for medical training.

The programme has achieved remarkable results in improving the capacity of 4,500 general and specialised doctors nationwide on diabetes and obesity. The cooperation helped develop professional guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of type 2 diabetes, non-communicable diseases in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, obesity and type 1 diabetes.

It also helped build a website to educate patients and the public about diabetes, developing educational materials and organising valuable online consultation sessions on non-communicable diseases for people.

Diabetes is a public health threat worldwide as well as in Vietnam. According to statistics from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), in 2021, there are an estimated 537 million adults in the world living with diabetes. This number is expected to increase to 783 million people by 2045. However, up to half of people with diabetes are undiagnosed and many people are living with type 2 diabetes without being aware of their condition.

Type 1 diabetes accounts for 90% of diabetes in children. In Vietnam, there is currently no complete data on the epidemiology of type 1 diabetes in children. Data from children's tertiary hospitals shows that there are nearly 2,000 children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, an increasing number nationwide over the past seven years, according to the Ministry of Health.