A five-year partnership signing to support 15 million people in Viet Nam by 2028. — Photo courtesy of Unilever Vietnam.

The signing ceremony took place within the framework of the programme “Meeting in response to National Hygiene Day to Improve People's Health” organised by MoH, Ha Tinh Province’s People's Committee and the Unilever Vietnam Foundation.

 Building a healthy and sustainable Viet Nam

 Unilever and the MoH’s Vietnam Health Environment Management Agency (VIHEMA) have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in implementing the programme in the next five years, aiming to improve hygiene and health conditions for 15 million people nationwide.

  The five-year cooperation program aims at communication, education, raising awareness and creating personal hygiene habits such as encouraging hand washing with soap, house and living environment sanitation, proper nutrition for the community to prevent diseases and protect health.

 The partnership is an opportunity for Unilever and the MoH to together promote initiatives, innovative models and activities, as well as build up models of civilised and clean hospitals, health stations, and residential areas.

 Unilever will support the MoH to organise workshops to share knowledge, training courses for capacity building, forums and conferences to connect, and dialogue among parties.

 Le Thi Hong Nhi, head of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Unilever Vietnam, said the strategic cooperation programme between Unilever and the MoH since 2007 has brought a positive impact on personal hygiene habits and living environment sanitation.

 “This contributes to the overall success of the national hygiene movement to improve people's health, and also proves the close and effective public-private partnership between the two parties,” she said.

 Over the past 15 years, Unilever along with their brands namely Lifebuoy, Vim, P/S, Pureit and OMO, cooperated with the MoH to implement several typical programmes to help more than 22 million people across the country with knowledge of personal hygiene habits, such as “Washing hands with soap for a healthy Viet Nam", “Expanding the scale of clean water and sanitation in rural areas”, “Green Clean Beautiful Hospital” and “Stay Strong Viet Nam” programmes, and the “5K” and “2K+” communications campaigns to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic.

 National Hygiene Movement

 In addition to the cooperation signing ceremony with Unilever, the MOH in collaboration with Ha Tinh Province and Unilever Foundation held “Meeting in response to National Hygiene Day to Improve People's Health” in 2023 in Ha Tinh City.

 A range of activities in response to the National Hygiene Day to improve people's health in 2023 include organising a meeting with the theme “For a healthy and sustainable Vietnam”, communication activities on hygiene and disease prevention at localities, and exhibiting achievements during the past 10 years of the health sector in implementing the National Hygiene Movement to improve people’s health.

 From 2012 to 2022, the movement has achieved many outstanding results in terms of well controlling the food poisoning situation to reduce the number of cases and deaths, doubling the rate of people maintaining the habit of washing hands with soap, increasing the proportion of rural households having hygienic latrines; increasing the clean water supply and the rate of clean water use at rural households, urban residents and health stations; ensuring medical waste to be treated at hospitals; improving school sanitation; especially improving personal hygiene and environmental sanitation to contribute to the control of the COVID-19 pandemic.