Health ministry launches “Healthy Lung” website

HÀ NỘI — The Medical Service Administration (MSA) under the Ministry of Health in collaboration with AstraZeneca launched the “Healthy Lung” website at a ceremony Thursday in Hà Nội.

Speaking at the ceremony, MSA director Lương Ngọc Khuê emphasised the importance of education and communication in strengthening disease prevention and enhancing public health.

“With the collaboration of AstraZeneca, the “Healthy Lung” website will create an interactive forum for healthcare professionals in the units for asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) management across the country, as well as help the community access information about respiratory diseases and answer patients’ frequently asked questions for better patient support,” said Khuê.

President of the HCM City Asthma and Allergy and Clinical Immunology Society Lê Thị Tuyết Lan said that the incidence of respiratory disease had been increasing, placing a significant burden on the health care systems of many Asian countries. In Việt Nam, asthma and COPD are quite common nowadays.

“The "Healthy Lung" website will provide scientific information as well as health education, screening programmes, and clubs for health workers, patients and the community to support the treatment and management of asthma and COPD in Việt Nam,” Lan said.

The website provides interactive features and enhances the level of knowledge sharing, capacity building and networking of the "Healthy Lung" programme between management authorities, health facilities, partners, organizations, clinicians, respiratory experts, patients and the community in general, to improve their knowledge and skills in the prevention and management of diseases.

This is a part of collaborative activities under a Memorandum of Understanding signed by MSA and AstraZeneca in 2017. The three-year programme focuses its activities on addressing the current gap in asthma and COPD management by raising awareness of these diseases and enhancing access to available treatments through a country-wide patient education project.

It is estimated that over 4.2 per cent of Việt Nam’s population suffers from COPD. The MSA said that only 39.7 per cent of patients had their asthma under control. At the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in HCM City, the treatment cost for one COPD patient who was not well-treated during the stable phase, leading to hospitalisation due to exacerbations, was estimated to be up to VNĐ225 million (US$9,700) per year, 10 times higher than the cost of treatment (VNĐ22 million ($970) yearly) in the stable phase — VNS