Khanh Hoa is seeking opinions on monthly support policies for village and residential group health workers and village and hamlet midwives.
According to the draft being consulted, the highest support level is 0.7 times the base salary level, applied in densely populated areas and difficult areas.
Da Nang is also implementing policies to attract doctors to regional health centers, health stations in mountainous areas, islands and difficult areas.
Doctors who commit to working for at least 5 years can be supported once from 250 to 500 million VND depending on their level, not to mention additional support for people with good academic results or working in particularly difficult areas.
Two localities, two ways of doing things and two different target groups. One policy aims to strengthen the community health care network from the grassroots level; one policy focuses on solving the problem of lacking specialized human resources in difficult areas. But both show that: investment in grassroots healthcare must first start from investment in people.
For a long time, when it comes to improving the quality of grassroots healthcare, people often mention building new health stations, purchasing equipment, and supplementing medicine. These things are all necessary.
Facilities are a necessary condition, but people determine the operational capacity and service quality of grassroots healthcare.
And the community health care network will be difficult to cover every household if health workers in villages and residential groups still have to work with too low support while the area is getting wider and the population is increasing.
Therefore, Khanh Hoa calculating the level of support and the number of employees according to population size is a reasonable approach. More work, greater responsibility, policies also need to be adjusted appropriately.
Similarly, the hundreds of millions of VND in support from Da Nang is a positive sign to solve the problem of bringing qualified doctors to places where it is difficult to recruit people.
However, attracting new people is only the first step, more importantly, keeping them staying.
Attracting a doctor to a difficult area should not stop at initial support but also needs a working environment, equipment, training opportunities, professional development, income and living conditions sufficient to be assured of long-term commitment.
The same goes for village and hamlet health workers. It is not possible to just rely on the sense of responsibility of those who directly stick to the area, but there needs to be appropriate support policies so that they can be assured and attached.
Grassroots healthcare is the closest place to the people and also the leading line in primary health care. To have people examined, monitored for health and detected diseases early from where they live, first of all, there must be enough people to work, and those people must be paid, facilitated and recognized accordingly.
Strengthening grassroots healthcare must start from making people who are sticking to stations and villages able to live with the profession, do a good job and want to be attached to the place they are serving for a long time.
