Facts and Figures

Vietnam lies along the western shore of the South China Sea and stretches some 3,260 kilometres along the eastern coast of the Indochina Peninsula. The estimated population of Vietnam is 83 million.

Approximately 80% of Vietnam is made up of mountains, high plateaus and jungles and only 20% of the country is made up of flat land. Vietnam is administratively divided into 8 regions, 64 provinces, which are further subdivided into 654 districts and 10,541 communes, precincts and towns within Vietnam. Each commune consists of hamlets and villages.

Vietnam has experienced significant economic growth and social transformation since the late 1980s following the launch of 'doi moi', a policy and institutional reform process. The changes under doi moi included land reform, price liberalisation, agricultural deregulation and new legislation on public and private enterprises, and were aimed at modernising the economy and promoting competitive, export-driven industry.

The success of the reform process for Vietnam is evident in the rapid growth of its economy over the past two decades. In 2003, Vietnam had the second fastest growing economy in the world, after China, with growth rates of around 7% per annum. Poverty rates have fallen from over 70% in the mid-1980s to around 29% of the population.

While the overall living standards in Vietnam have risen with this prolific economic growth, the gap between rich and poor has widened and conditions have worsened for the poorest of the poor. This is particularly evident in food poverty among ethnic minorities, regional variations in access to quality health and social services and unemployment for young urban males.

Source: World Health Organization

Population: 83.1 million
Life expectancy: 70.8 years
Infant mortality rate: 17 per 1,000 births
Percentage of population which is undernourished: 17%
Number of doctors: 53 per 100,000 people

With the rapid rate of economic growth, the health of the Vietnamese population has also improved markedly over the past two decades.  Life expectancy at birth has risen from 50.3 years in 1970-75 to 70.8 years in 2004.  Over the same period, infant mortality has dropped from 55 per 1,000 live births in 1970 to 17 in 2004.

Despite the progress in general health, there is wide disparity in the health of people across different geographical regions and population groups. Maternal and infant mortality rates among ethnic groups are substantially higher than the national average and the rates are actually increasing amongst the poorest of the poor.

There is need for further progress in particular health issues, including Hepatitis B, acute respiratory diseases, child nutrition and foodborne and parasitic diseases. Chronic malnutrition still affects one third of children under five years of age.

Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) are among the new or re-emerging diseases that are becoming more prevalent. Life-style related illnesses are also increasing, particularly injuries from road accidents which it is anticipated are likely to overtake infectious diseases as the most common cause of mortality.

The proportion of HIV infections among people under 30 years of age has increased in recent years. In 2004, HIV/AIDS, with a 44.2% increase in mortality compared with 2003, became the second most common cause of hospital deaths.

The delivery of health care in Vietnam is shared between the public and private sectors with
a growing move to private health services, particularly for outpatient care. Hospital care is still largely provided by the public health system. Public health in Vietnam is administered through a four-tier system: 

Ministry of Health
The Ministry is the main national authority in the health sector and formulates and implements the health policy and programs in the country.

Provincial Health Bureaus
Each bureau is funded by the provincial local government, with some relying on the national government for extra funding. 

The bureaus follow the policies set by the Ministry of Health but are responsible in the most part for planning health services and programs in the provinces.

There is at least one general hospital in each province and some also have one or more specialised centres (for example, oncological hospitals, traditional medicine hospitals, cardiology centres or psychiatric hospitals).

District Health Centres
District Health Centres (DHCs) service the population in the district and manage all health activities. In each district, there is a district hospital, usually with a maternal and child health care unit and a family planning unit attached. 

The district hospitals provide training for community health staff.  Each district has two or more intercommunal polyclinics, which are commune health stations that have been upgraded with specialist equipment and doctors and usually include an ophthalmologist on staff.

Commune Health Stations
Commune Health Stations (CHS) are responsible for providing primary health care, including preventative, ambulatory and in-patient services and also for referring complicated cases to upper levels of care.

The Stations are expected to implement national health programs and are responsible for all health services at the commune level. There are generally up to five staff at each CHS who are under the leadership of an assistant doctor or nurse.

During the past few years, the Vietnamese Government has revived and promoted the village health worker strategy to provide basic health care services to people living in remote areas.

These village health workers are community members who receive training, at the district level, in a number of common health topics, such as immunisation, antenatal care, family planning, sanitation and malaria. 

Although spending on health is just 1.5 % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Vietnamese
Government has increasingly recognised the important role of health in promoting socio-economic development and in improving the quality of life of the Vietnamese people.

The government has adopted strategies to improve health care services and outcomes over a ten year period. These include the ‘National Strategy for Peoples Health Care 2001-2010’ and the ‘Health Care Fund for the Poor 2002’ which aims to provide health insurance for 14.6 million people.

The key areas of focus for the government include improving the equity and efficiency of the health sector, addressing emerging health issues (such as infectious diseases), integrating traditional and modern medicine and managing the public-private mix of service delivery to protect the public interest.

Sources: Human Development Report 2006, UNDP, World Health Organization

Number of blind people: 523,530
National blindness prevalence: 0.63%
Main causes of blindness: Cataract (60%), Corneal scarring, glaucoma and childhood blindness
Number of people with cataract blindness: 700,000 (backlog) and an annual incidence of approximately 82,000.
Number of cataract operations performed annually: 100,000 annually, compared to 100 per year in the early 1990s
Number of ophthalmologists: 900
Reasons for low cataract surgical rates and backlog: Lack of adequately trained and equipped doctors and limited investment in eye health

Basic blindness prevention and treatment activities first began in Vietnam in 1958 during the war. At that time trachoma was the most serious public health problem. Basic trachoma control activities helped to alleviate the problem. These were carried out by eye care personnel from the Hanoi National Institute of Ophthalmology and provincial eye stations throughout Vietnam.

Vietnam’s National Blindness Prevention Program was established in 1986 by the Ministry of Health, National Institute of Ophthalmology and the World Health Organization.

As part of the program, eye care services were integrated into the primary health care system, with a special emphasis on cataract intervention, trachoma and xerophthalmia control (xerophthalmia is an inflammation of the cornea which is associated with nutritional deficiency).

Today, eye care services are not yet widespread throughout the country due to the many financial, technical and human resource challenges which need to be overcome, particularly in the rural and remote areas of Vietnam.

Source: Vietnam Ministry of Health