Conor Lenihan T.D, Ireland’s Minister of State for Science, Technology and Innovation, said the state-of-the-art laboratory will contribute to raising Vietnam’s capacity and infrastructure in viral diagnosis under the joint project conducted by the University College Dublin (UCD) and the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) that started in 2007.

The four-year project is capitalised at 5 million euro funded by the Government of Ireland and the Atlantic Philanthropies.

The project also the first in health care cooperation between the two countries, will help Vietnamese scientists in their epidemiological research to combat and prevent new dangerous epidemics as well as the recurrence of contagious diseases such as SARS, A/H5N1, A/H1N1, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B, said Vietnamese Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu.