Students donate blood (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – A conference was held in Hanoi on March 9 to improve the efficiency of blood donation, humanitarian medical examination and treatment campaigns in 2016.
Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said Vietnam collected over 1.15 million units of blood in 2015, 8.4 times over 1994, when the first blood donation drive was launched.
She raised the fact that, the country has nearly 3,000 blood donation clubs with more than 114,000 members.
The Vietnam Red Cross Society along with the Ministry of Health, the General Political Department of the Vietnam People’s Army, and the Vietnam Young Doctors’ Association have worked together to implement the programme on humanitarian health check-ups and treatment between 2014 and 2017.
The programme aims to provide free treatment and medicines for at least one million patients nationwide, especially poor people, social policy beneficiaries, ethnic minority groups and those living in remote, sea, island and border districts.
In 2015, it held over 4,000 charitable medical examinations drives, 1.6 times against the previous year, and provided free medicine for nearly 1.7 million people, up 47 percent over 2014.
In 2016, the programme is looking to provide free health check-ups for at least 1.3 million patients across the country and collect nearly 1.2 million units of blood.-VNA
