Dr. Annie Chu – Acting team leader of UHC and representatives of some VSS’s Departments attended the awarding ceremony. Speaking in the ceremony, Son emphasized that cooperation between Vietnam and WHO is a special relation which creates a lot of important changes towards stable and efficient universal healthcare coverage. “With WHO’s plans, programmes, cooperative activities, support, especially pharmaceuticals and medical supplies in the last five years, our cooperation has been going in the right way, solving basic problems related to safety, effective  pharmaceutical mannagement and usage to response to antibiotic strategy in particular and pharmaceutics strategy in general...” – said Son. VSS leader also highly appreciated the devotement of WHO office in Vietnam in general and Universal Health Care (UHC) team in particular in supporting VSS, especially related professional departments, from policy criticism, effectiveness evaluation, safe, reasonable and cost-effective drug usage to international experience sharing in order to educate, enhance professional capacity of VSS’s officials.

Illustrative image (source: internet)

With this morale, Son hopes that in the next time, this good cooperation relationships will continue to gain huge marks, WHO office continues to companion with VSS to create big achievements in social security for Vietnamese. On the period of being UHC team leader, Dr. Momoe Takeuchi contributed his time and effort to promote, build and implement studies with VSS. These activities have important impact on promoting national strategy on using antibiotics appropriately, safely and effectively, especially in local health facilities, contributing to balancing health insurance. Son supposes that  with support from Dr. Momoe Takeuchi,  cooperative activities of VSS and WHO in Vietnam creates positive premise to VSS and related Ministries: Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance,… From that point, health insurance drug data base is built. Awarding the Medal “For the cause of Vietnam Social Security” is not only the acknowledgement and thanks for Dr’s enthusiastic, professional and effective help, but also sincere thanks to WHO” – Son confirmed. Touched with Vietnamese in general and VSS’s affection in particular to him in last 4 years, Dr gives sincere thanks to VSS leaders; and confirmed that she will always follow VSS’s strong development towards social security for people.

Illustrative image (source: internet)

Dr Annie Chu emphasized “Not only Dr Momoe Takeuchi but also we committe to support, consolidate VSS’s role in health insurance. In the short term, we focus on health insurance law amendment, ex. payment method such as DRG… With new position, I hope to accompany and cooperate closely with VSS in the near future.”

As a UHC team leader, Dr. Momoe Takeuchi had worked for WHO in Vietnam since Jul. 2017. During working for WHO, she had contributed to implementing health insurance policy in Vietnam, especially consulting, supporting to manage and use safety pharmaceuticals and medical supplies with effective cost, creating efficient results in developing Vietnam health system. Therefore, on Jun 7^th 2021, General Director of VSS signed the Decision No. 502/QĐ-BHXH on Awarding the Medal “For the cause of Vietnam Social Security” to Dr. Momoe Takeuchi because of her contribution to VSS development .