Vietnam guarantees the right to public healthcare for its people

Vietnam has strived to expand the scope of health insurance, thereby moving the country toward reaching the goal of universal health care.

Poverty eradication, social security, and better medical care for people are all part of efforts the nation has been making to better ensure human rights.

Vietnamese average life expectancy up by 15 years

The country is considered to be one of the fastest-growing countries in the world in terms of increasing the Human Development Index (HDI). In just a decade, Vietnamese HDI has soared by 46%, among the countries with the highest growth rate globally.

According to information provided by the UNDP's latest Human Development Report, the Vietnamese HDI human ranking continues to increase from 115 to 107, with country ranked in the group with a high HDI.

Thanks to great successes made in family planning, the national birth rate has dropped from 6.4 children per woman to 2.09 in 2006 and continues to be maintained at current level.

Vietnam is also among the six countries in the world to achieve the fifth Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and empowering all women and girls in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the UN.

According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), unlike most developing countries, Vietnam was able to maintain economic growth during the most difficult years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although average growth has slowed and vulnerable groups and individuals have endured very difficult times, the nation has avoided a reversal of human development progress.

The country has obtained numerous achievements in improving people's lives and healthcare quality in recent decades. Indeed, the average life expectancy has increased by 15 years, with a significant decline made in vaccine-preventable diseases. The nation has expanded its health insurance coverage, moving toward its goal of achieving universal health care, Ghebreyesus said.

According to data from the General Statistics Office, the average life expectancy of Vietnamese people stood at 73.7 years old in 2022 and 73.6 years old in 2022, of which men were 71.1 years old and women were 76.5 years old.

Population quality has improved, while fertility has decreased sharply and the replacement fertility level has been basically maintained since 2005.

The death rate remains low, with the average life expectancy increasing due to the developments made in medicine and improved health care.

The nation has suffered unprecedented impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic which took lives, increased inequality, and reduced people's ability to enjoy human rights.

Ensuring the right to health care is also a top priority as the nation has carried out the largest vaccination campaign in history, with more than 266 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines being administered to most people aged 12 years and older in just over two years.

At a recent meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha, Dr. Saia Ma’u Piukala, regional director for the Western Pacific of the WHO, shared some of the WHO's priority goals in supporting and strengthening the capacity of the Vietnamese health sector in a bid to increase the capacity of the preventive health system to respond to future epidemics, improve the environment, promote healthy lifestyles, and ensure healthcare security.

The WHO predicts that the country will face many challenges moving forward, especially amid climate change seriously affecting the level of human development in the most vulnerable areas, forcing many people to relocate homes and lose livelihood.

However, WHO experts believe that Vietnam has enough capacity to manage the uncertainties related to cascading crises.

Ensuring people's right to public healthcare

The right to public healthcare is always considered by the country to be one of the mist important human rights, with this being the basis for exercising many other human rights.

The exercise of the right to community healthcare is also associated with other human rights such as the right to life, the right to food, housing, employment, education, protection of privacy, and access to information.

The provisions of the 2013 Constitution on social security rights are specified in many specialised legal documents such as Labor Code, Social Insurance Law, Law on Elderly, Law on Children, Law on People with Disabilities, Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Health Insurance Law, and  Law on Occupational Safety and Health.

Laws in this area better ensures citizens' rights to access and use quality medical services, health insurance services, and social insurance, thereby creating a legal basis for implementing social preferential policies for policy beneficiaries and consumer protection. In addition, it serves to better resolve the relationship linking economic growth with the implementation of social policies in general, as well as labour and social security policies in particular according to the principles of equity and social progress.

The number of people participating in health insurance in 2020 reached 88.04 million,  accounting for 90.85% of the national population. Elsewhere, the figure of 2021 was 88.837 million, making up 91.01% of the population, exceeding the target assigned in the Government's Resolution issued in 2019.

By the end of 2023, health insurance coverage hit about 94% of the Vietnamese population. The social security system and social policies have proven their superiority in supporting workers facing difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of June, 2023, the rate of ethnic minorities participating in health insurance averaged 91.9%. The rate of malnourished and underweight children under five stood at 15.8% on average, with the rate of stunting among children under five at 21% on average.

Although there are plenty of challenges ahead and resources for social security remain limited, Vietnam has been and will be making constant efforts to enable people enjoy better public healthcare. This is also the result of innovation and stronger socio-economic development.