The city last Friday began to implement a programme to encourage consumers, hospitals, manufactures and retailers throughout the city to increase the use of domestic drugs.
Pham Khanh Phong Lan, deputy head of the city's Department of Health, said the "Thuoc Viet Cho Nguoi Viet" (Vietnamese drugs for Vietnamese people) programme also aimed to urge local pharmaceutical companies to strengthen production and better promote their drugs.

The programme will mobilise doctors to write prescriptions for homemade drugs and owners of drugstores to sell them.

Lan said that the programme, to be carried out until the end of 2012, would also be used to petition the Ministry of Health to enhance protective policies for domestic drugs and limit imports of medicines that the country can produce itself like pain-killers, antipyretics, commonly used antibiotics and vitamin.

With nearly 100 firms meeting good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, Viet Nam can produce half the medicines it needs at one-third or half the prices of imported drugs, according to Drug Administration of Viet Nam.

However, domestic drugs account for only a small number of essential medicines used and stored by hospitals.

In 2009, the production value of domestically produced essential drugs reached more than US$830 million, an increase of 16 per cent over 2008, but met only 50 per cent of residents' demand.

Viet Nam's list of necessary drugs currently has 355 western medicines and 94 traditional ones.

Deputy Minister of Health Cao Minh Quang has said that the ministry will issue regulations on good prescription practice at hospitals and on commissions paid by pharmaceutical companies to hospital staff for boosting sales of their products.

He said changes were necessary to the regulations that allow companies to use money as well as drugs for promotional purposes.

He said the ministry would ask health departments to strengthen inspection of and punishment for pharmacists at hospitals who ask patients to buy drugs not originally prescribed in order to receive commission from pharmaceutical companies.

Such acts would be publicised via mass media and the licences of both the individuals as well as companies would be revoked, he added. — VNS

From Vietnamnews