Preventive medicine plays an important role in health care, particularly in epidemic prevention and in checkups. However, the budget for preventive medicine remains low.
Pham Le Tuan, head of the Planning and Finance Department under the Ministry of Health, told the Daily on Tuesday that the State budget for preventive medicine was poor and failed to meet the basic demand of the health care sector.
According to the department, 2007 saw a low expenditure rate for preventive medicine. In some provinces, the budget for preventive medicine reached only 12%-13% compared to 14% of the total State budget for the segment.
To promote expenditure for the segment, the National Assembly approved a regulation that requires a province to spend at least 30% of its total budget for health care. However, the Ministry of Finance has not issued any guidance on how to deploy the regulation.
Tuan said the regulation was difficult to implement because in reality the provincial health care budget is only enough to ensure basic operations of the health care system.
Tuan suggested the ministries of health and finance clarify preventive medicine’s scope and scale clearly and lay a foundation to calculate real demand for budget allocation.
“The Ministry of Finance needs to issue a detailed circular to guide provinces on how to allocate provincial budgets for preventive medicine,” Tuan noted.
The Health Ministry reported that the total State budget for health care in 2008 was VND607 billion, up by 13.36% compared to 2007, VND303 billion of which came from the Central Government and the rest from provincial budgets.
This year saw the incredible increase in expenditure for preventive medicine of 253.5% compared to 2008 as the State has spent VND1,539 billion for health care, VND715 billion of which came from the Government.
Health Minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu said that 2009 had seen many epidemics, particularly H1N1 swine flu. By Hien Nguyen, The Saigon Times Daily