Vietnam gives India, Cambodia medical supplies for COVID-19 fight

Lieutenant General Vu Chien Thang, Director General of the Foreign Relations Department under the Ministry of Defence chaired the hand-over ceremony on May 24, during which he spotlighted fruitful development of the traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic partnership between Vietnam and India as well as their defence cooperation in recent times.

He expressed gratitude to the Indian Government and people for their support, valuable COVID-19 prevention experience and documents shared with Vietnam last year when Vietnam was hit by COVID-19 outbreaks.

Thang also thanked the Indian Ministry of Defence for its effective assistance in training to improve the quality of human resources, non-refundable aid and preferential credit packages for industrial and defence development.

He expressed his hope that these medical supplies will contribute to helping the Indian people overcome challenges from COVID-19 and soon repel the health crisis, which is causing severe effects in the South Asian country.

For his part, Indian Ambassador to Vietnam Pranay Verma thanked and highly valued the Vietnamese ministry’s valuable asisstance to the Indian people, saying that the ministry’s timely spiritual and material support shows solidarity, friendship and sharing of difficulties between the people and armies of the two countries.

He affirmed that in more than a year of dealing with COVID-19, India has learned important lessons about the importance of international cooperation in fighting the pandemic, emphasising the significance of Vietnam’s medical supplies for the Indian people at present.

At the ceremony held by Sai Gon Newport Corporation at the Moc Bai International Border Gate in Tay Ninh province to hand over medical equipment and supplies to the Royal Cambodian Navy (Photo: https://www.qdnd.vn/)

The same day, under the authorisation of the Naval High Command, the Sai Gon Newport Corporation held a ceremony at the Moc Bai International Border Gate in the southern province of Tay Ninh to hand over medical equipment and supplies to the Royal Cambodian Navy to help the country prevent and control the COVID-19 pandemic.

The donations included two motorised sprayers, 10 battery-powered sprayers, 100,000 made-in-Vietnam three-layer medical masks, 500kg of disinfectant chemical Chloramin B, and 1,000 bottles of hand sanitiser.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Royal Cambodian Navy's Deputy Chief of the General Staff Vice Admiral Non Sophat expressed his sincere thanks to the Vietnam People's Navy for its assistance for its Cambodian counterpart in preventing the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that this demonstrates the good friendship between the two countries' navies, armies and people, he said.

The Sai Gon Newport Corporation also presented 10,000 medical face masks to officers and soldiers at the Moc Bai International Border Gate Border Guard Station.