Their two-day conference co-organised by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO), focused on health quarantine work in border areas.  

The participants cited poor and insufficient facilities and a low level of professional skills and foreign languages at health quarantine centres.

A number of regulations on health quarantine have not yet been finalised, leading to an overlap in goods supervision and container handling, they said.

Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan asked health quarantine centres to strictly implement decrees on border health quarantines, exchange information, and make public quarantine steps at border gates.

Vietnam plans to earmark over VND1 trillion (US$62.5 million) between now and 2010 for health quarantine centres in border areas in order to speed up supervision procedures, and the prevention and control of epidemics.