The story of a series of self-proclaimed dairy products surrounding K Hospital (Tan Trieu, Thanh Tri, Hanoi) has left patients confused and difficult to distinguish, and has rang the alarm bell.
Tan Trieu K Hospital treats thousands of cancer patients - those who are in the most severe treatment phase, need a strictly controlled diet.
However, around the hospital, there are cadets of "self-declared" dairy products, with unknown content and vague origins, but are still marketed with winged advertisements such as "preventing cancer cells", "increasing immunity", "recovering after surgery".
The question is why can those products easily get through the control fence that should have been so strict in the health sector and market management?
According to current regulations (Decree 15/2018/ND-CP), health protection foods (including nutritional powder) are not required to have their ingredients assessed before circulation, but only need businesses to " self-declare" their quality and send documents to the authorities for distribution.
This is a policy designed with the purpose of facilitating businesses. However, actual operations show many shortcomings, especially the quality control mechanism from pre-inspection to post-inspection.
With too many participating units (in the Central level under the management of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Industry and Trade...; in the locality under the management of local departments and branches), it leads to the situation of "no one cries" - no one takes primary responsibility.
This leads to the fact that food, especially milk, has long had all consumer confidence bet on the "capital" of the manufacturer. And as reality has proven, that salary can be easily exchanged for profits.
When the self-declared mechanism is applied to powdered milk - a food used as a nutrient for patient treatment, each gap will have to pay with the health and even the lives of the patient.
Especially the group of cancer patients, who are already weak, vulnerable and often have a lot of faith in advertising with the mentality of "if you have a disease, you will be lucky".
It is time to close the loopholes and tighten the self-publishing mechanism. For functional foods and starch for patients, it is necessary to re-classify and apply the appraisal process before putting them on the market - similar to medicine or medical equipment.
It is necessary to build a proactive, regular, public post-inspection mechanism and there must be a person with primary responsibility. At the same time, there must be regulations buoc the responsibility of e-commerce platforms, pharmacies, and distributors in controlling the quality of business products.
Self-declaration cannot be a legal shield for businesses to take advantage of; the environment around the hospital cannot be a place for counterfeit or poor quality goods to be publicly sold, making it easy to reach the disadvantaged.
And the price to pay is not only faith, but health, even the lives of people who are struggling with illness every day.
