Dr. Nguyen Quynh Lien - Head of the Committee for Democracy, Supervision and Social Criticism of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF); Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Duong - Chairman of the Advisory Council on Democracy and Law of the VFF - chaired the conference.
In more than 17 years of implementation, the Law on Infectious Disease Prevention and Control No. 03/2007/QH12 has achieved many positive results in the work of protecting, caring for and improving people's health. However, there are still shortcomings in quality of life, burden of disease, causes related to nutrition and environmental factors as well as policy gaps to adjust non-communicable disease prevention and mental health.
The development of a new Law with a comprehensive scope of regulation covering disease prevention activities is extremely necessary, with the aim of contributing to improving the health of both physical and mental health, stature, lifespan, and quality of life of Vietnamese people; controlling infectious diseases well, improving the capacity of the infectious disease prevention and control system; controlling the increase rate to reduce the rate of people infected with diseases in the community, limiting disability and premature death from non-communicable diseases.
Regarding the layout and scope of regulation, the draft Law on Disease Prevention consists of 6 chapters with 46 articles. The draft Law stipulates information, education, and communication on disease prevention; prevention and control of infectious diseases; prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, mental health disorders and other risk factors; nutrition in disease prevention and conditions to ensure disease prevention.
At the conference, based on the general contents of the draft Law on Disease Prevention presented by representatives of the drafting agency, delegates participated in discussions and contributed opinions to determine the major contents that need to be discussed by society for the draft Law on Disease Prevention.
From the perspective of the Front, Dr. Nguyen Van Pha - Deputy Head of the Advisory Council on Democracy and Law of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee - said that the law needs to clearly institutionalize the view that the State has policies to support vulnerable groups in disadvantaged areas in accessing disease prevention services. Regarding regulations on principles in disease prevention, Mr. Pha said that the draft law needs to clearly demonstrate the principles of proactiveness, comprehensiveness, and inter-sector, taking people as the center, fairness and sustainability.
Regulations on the responsibilities of state agencies need to be specified in the draft Law. At the same time, the drafting agency needs to review and improve legislative techniques, Dr. Nguyen Van Pha suggested.
Recognizing the opinions expressed at the conference, Dr. Nguyen Quynh Lien - Head of the Committee for Democracy, Supervision and Social Criticism of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee - affirmed that these are enthusiastic opinions, with in-depth scientific content in the health sector, contributing to suggesting major contents that need social criticism for the draft Law on Disease Prevention, thereby helping the drafting agency to have more constructive new solutions to better perfect the regulations in the draft Law on Disease Prevention.
