Over the past year, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided funding to the Vietnam Red Cross (VNRC) to help the nation prepare for the possible outbreak of pandemic disease.

Illustration photo - Source: Vietnamnet

Under this project, the VNRC has trained over 2,500 Vietnamese national and provincial trainers and community leaders in all 63 provinces and cities in pandemic preparedness and response planning and training.

At the central level, VNRC and its partners have adopted an inter-agency pandemic preparedness plan that outlines the roles of the country’s largest mass organizations such as VNRC, Youth Union, Women’s Union, Farmers’ Union and Veterans’ Association. In two focus provinces of Ha Nam and Quang Tri, VNRC helped develop a local response plan that was tested and adopted by all involved organizations and then afterwards, approved by the People’s Committee.

“From the mass organizations’ point of view, the inter-agency plan is a commitment of those organizations to support the government in pandemic efforts, matching its mandate, as assigned by the party and the government,” Mr. Nguyen Cao Cu, General Office Director of the Veterans’ Association, told a recent final project workshop. He stressed the need to implement the plan at the district and commune level and to educate and inform people directly in their communities.

According to Mr. Nguyen Nhu Lam, Vice Chairman of Ha Nam Provincial People’s Committee, “not so many projects within such short time could help deliver such results.” He added that local authorities “very much appreciated” the project, which had also “helped bring about opportunity for partners to participate in policy making in pandemic response.”

He recommended more education and behavioural change plus communication at the community level, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the different sectors and levels so that the plans can be put into action as soon as possible.

The preparedness training and planning within the framework scope of the project will assist Vietnamese authorities to cope effectively with future bird flu and other pandemic outbreak threats.

Vietnam was one of the first countries in the world hit by highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) H5N1 outbreaks in 2003 and also reported the world’s first AI human case in that same year.

Under the Government of Vietnam’s comprehensive National Avian and Pandemic Influenza (API) Program, USAID began supporting API programs in Vietnam in 2005 and since then has provided approximately US$35 million in assistance and technical support.

Source: CPV