Duties and organizational structure of Health Ministry

Accordingly, the MOH is a government agency responsible for implementing State management over health issues, including preventive medicine; medical checkup, treatment and rehabilitation; medical examination, forensic medicine and forensic psychiatry; traditional medicine; reproductive health; medical equipment; cosmeceuticals; food safety; health insurance; population; and State management over public services in the fields under the ministry’s jurisdiction.

With regards to preventive medicine, the MOH is tasked with building, issuing or submitting to the authorized level for issuance of legal normative documents, specialized regulations, national standards and national technical regulations on the fields: supervising, preventing and combating infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS, noncommunicable diseases, occupational diseases and injury accidents; vaccination; biosafety at the medical laboratory; border health quarantine; environmental sanitation, labor sanitation and school sanitation; drinking and domestic water sanitation; community nutrition; cigarette; and chemicals, insecticidal and germicidal preparations for household and medical use.

The ministry is also responsible for conducting supervision over infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, diseases of unknown causes, factors potentially affecting the people’s health and other community health issues; promptly detecting epidemic infectious diseases and organizing the publication of epidemics and announcement of the end of epidemics in line with the law; and collaborating with relevant agencies to provide accurate information on infectious diseases in a timely fashion.

Concerning medical checkup, treatment and rehabilitation, the MOH is responsible for building, issuing or submitting to the authorized levels for issuance of legal normative documents, specialized regulations, national standards, national technical regulations and economic-technical norms on the fields of medical checkup and treatment, blood transfusion safety, nursing, rehabilitation, clinical nutrition, plastic surgery, medical examination, forensic medicine and forensic psychiatry in accordance with the law. In addition, the ministry uniformly manages the grant, re-issuance and revocation of practice certificates and operational permits in the field of medical examination and treatment.

The MOH also manages the quality of drugs and materials used to produce drugs and cosmetics; prevent the illegal import of drugs and drug materials; and manage food safety in the process of manufacturing, preliminarily processing, processing, preserving, transporting, exporting, importing and trading in products.

                                                                                                                        By Vien Nhu