Improving the HCM City Centre for Disease Control’s capabilities is among the key activities the city health authorities have set out for themselves in 2022. – Photo nld.com.vn

HCM CITY — HCM City’s Department of Health will focus on improving medical facilities and the HCM City Centre for Disease Control, and training personnel to strengthen the healthcare sector this year.

It said it has identified several key activities by learning from last year’s experiences.

One of them is launching “safe and flexible COVID-19 prevention medical strategies to keep the pandemic under control” through vaccination and other preventive measures and deploying sufficient frontline and intensive care medical workers.

It also aims to restructure medical facilities so that they can treat both COVID and other patients simultaneously and improve treatment, especially in intensive care.

Another key effort would be to train and improve the capabilities of primary healthcare and specialised medical workers.

The disease control centre will also have its capability enhanced to match that of its counterparts in neighbouring countries.

Purchase of equipment by public medical facilities will be monitored more closely to avoid fraud, construction of hospitals will be speeded up and infrastructure at ward medical centres will be upgraded.

The department will set up databases and implement digital transformation to electronically keep track of people’s health profiles, create a digital platform for COVID management and use digital technologies to manage pharmacies.

It will step up oversight of private clinics and pharmacies, and get private pharmacies to partake in the city’s fight against the pandemic.

HCM City, the country’s COVID epicentre, has had over 504,000 cases since the end of April, when the fourth wave began.

In October, Tăng Chí Thượng, director of the department, said: “In the six months [since the start of the outbreak], medical personnel went through the most brutal battle in HCM City’s healthcare history.”

The large number of patients last year placed a huge strain on medical facilities and personnel, and reinforcements were required from elsewhere.

But the daily number of cases has been dropping, falling from 1,675 on December 1 to 384 on January 2. — VNS