Role of medical physics in healthcare stressed

Organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the event attracted more than 100 Vietnamese and international scientists and leaders of hospitals in the region. At the conference, participants shared the latest international standards in implementing medical physics for treating problems, such as the use of radiotherapy in treating cancer.

They also stressed that a serious lack of human resources in this field exists in Vietnam, since operating medical physics equipment requires highly-skilled physicists. It is estimated that if 1 physicist were to treat 70 patients, Vietnam would need more than 3,300 physicists for the more than 200 new cases of cancer each year.