Hanoi (VNA) - Half of all medicine usedin Vietnam is locally manufactured, however, it has been largely unused incentral hospitals, PhD Truong Quoc Cuong, Deputy Minister of Health, has said.

To increase the rate of local medicine use,doctors could even be required to commit to prescribing domestic products,according to Cuong.

Speaking at a conference reviewing the campaign‘Vietnamese People Use Vietnam’s medicines’ held recently, Cuong said the useof domestically-produced medicine increased during the four years of thecampaign.

Of all medicine used at provincial-levelhospitals, 35.4 percent of it was locally manufactured, an increase of 1.5percent compared to before launching the campaign. At district-level hospitals,the rate was nearly 70 percent, 8 percent moiré than previously.

As many as 520 out of 923 active ingredientslicensed for use in medicine can be made in Vietnam, and awareness of domesticdrugs has improved, reducing hospital fees for patients and growing thepharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceutical factories have invested in modernmachinery and high-quality human resources to produce antibiotic and vaccinematerials, bio-products and high-tech dosage forms. The quality of medicine hasimproved at cheaper prices than imported medicine.

Currently, there are 163 pharmaceuticalfactories at Pharmaceutical Inspection Cooperation Scheme – goodmanufacturing practices standards, with modern production-lines to produce medicinesto international standard.

However, Cuong said, most domestic medicine wasmade from simple active ingredients to treat simple diseases. As a result, itis unpopular at central hospitals that treat seriously ill patients.

The rate of use of domestic medicine at centralhospitals has in fact decreased during the project, from 11.6 percent in 2013,to 11.3 percent in 2014 and 10.02 percent in 2015.

The percentage was even lower in key hospitalssuch as 3.1 percent at the Central Maternity Hospital, 3.3 percent at CancerHospital, 3.9 percent at Bach Mai Hospital and 5.8 percent at Vietnam-GermanyHospital.  

Cuong said the low usage rate at these hospitalswas down to two factors: doctor’s prescriptions and patients preferringimported drugs.

In addition, he said, leaders of centralhospitals told him that they wanted to prescribe Vietnamese-produced medicine,but most patients were seriously ill with deadly diseases, requiring medicinesthe Vietnamese pharmaceutical industry can’t produce.

Dr Tran Viet Tiep, director of Vietnam-Sweden UongBi Hospital, said that to reach the goal of 45 percent of drugs used in hishospital being locally manufactured, leaders of the hospital must convincepatients and their families of the drugs’ quality by building treatmentprotocols, participating in consultations and inspecting doctor’sprescriptions.

Most antibiotics, painkillers and intravenousmedicines prescribed at the hospital were locally-made, he said.

Tran Tuc Ma, general manager of Traphaco JSC,said that most of his firm’s products were sold at drug stores as the companyfound it hard to sell them at central hospitals.

The reason, he said, was that products wereclassified by their biological ingredients, not in terms of quality. Meanwhile,enterprises had to invest in their products to make them better, leading tohigher costs compared to other products.

To hit targets in the second phase of thecampaign, Cuong said apart from getting Vietnamese consumers’ to use domesticproducts, businesses must make more efforts to advertise their medicine ataffordable prices, improving product design, and proving its quality to gainthe trust of doctors and patients.

The ministry will continue encouraging doctorsto prioritise bidding for and prescribing locally-made drugs.

The campaign ‘Vietnamese People Use Vietnam’smedicines’ was launched by the ministry and took place between 2012 and 2015.In the second phase of 2016-2020, the campaign targets that 30 percent of drugsprescribed at central hospitals are domestic products, with the targeted ratesat provincial and district hospitals 50 and 75 percent respectively.-VNA