Photo: baoangiang.com.vn

The Health Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) under the Ministry of Health (MoH) ran a community-based health emergency response drill on August 14 in Hanoi to enhance its performance.

Prominent individuals present at the scene included representatives from the EOC, the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Deputy Director of the MoH’s Preventive Medicine Administration Dang Quang Tan stressed the need to be well-prepared for community health emergencies, particularly in the context of increasing emerging diseases and pandemics in the world such as Ebola and Mers-CoV.

Vietnam needs to develop specific Incident Action Plans (IAP), Tan underscored.

In the drill, the national emergency was developed at four levels, each with five response teams responsible for supervision and prevention, treatment, communications, logistics and international cooperation.

They were required to respond promptly, creatively and effectively within a seven hour scenario that simulated a 10-day incident in real life.

Experts from the WHO and the CDC hailed the performance of the EOC.

The drill aimed to enhance the capability and skills of planning and implementing a health emergency response at a national scale.

Source: VNA