The Ministry of Health has drafted the Law on Disease Prevention. In particular, the Ministry proposes many new contents compared to the current Law on Infectious Disease Prevention and Control No. 03/2007/QH12 dated November 21, 2007. The draft is currently being consulted by the people.
Proposal on medical isolation, on medical quarantine
The draft Law proposes to stipulate that people with, suspected of, carrying pathogens or having contact with pathogens of group A infectious diseases and some group B diseases must be quarantined at home, medical facilities or designated locations.
Medical examination and treatment facilities in areas with epidemics are responsible for organizing quarantine according to the direction of the People's Committee. In case of non-compliance, they will be subject to enforcement quarantine according to Government regulations.
The Draft Law proposes the Regulation on medical quarantine at border gates for people, vehicles, goods, bodies and samples of biological products for export - import and transit Vietnamese; Including collection, processing of information, medical declaration, supervision, inspection, health handling and application of epidemic prevention measures; People and vehicles must declare, comply with isolation and pay fees; organize quarantine issuance of certificates and coordinate with customs and immigration; Local authorities ensure conditions and coordinate with international agencies and organizations; The Government details the order and measures of handling cases that have not yet been quarantined and organized.
People's quality of life is still limited due to disease
According to the Ministry of Health, the development of a new Law with a comprehensive scope of regulation covering disease prevention activities is extremely necessary, in order to overcome shortcomings and inadequacies in the work of protecting, caring for and improving people's health to meet practical requirements in the new situation.
In recent times, in addition to the positive results achieved in protecting, caring for and improving people's health, the implementation still has shortcomings and inadequacies such as: People's quality of life is limited due to illness; Vietnamese people have a relatively high life expectancy compared to countries with the same standard of living, but have more years of living with illness.
The reason is: Unreasonable nutritional regimes lead to limited physical development, Vietnamese stature as well as increased non-communicable diseases related to nutrition; rapid increase in non-communicable diseases and disease burden; increase in environmental risk factors such as environmental pollution, limited awareness of personal hygiene and hygiene of the environment of the people, climate change and extreme weather phenomena, ... affecting the health of many communities, contributing to the increase in hospitalizations.
Solving problems from policy mechanisms and legal gaps in disease prevention activities. Through reviewing the Vietnamese legal system, it is shown that although there are up to 63 legal documents regulating activities related to disease prevention and improvement, in reality, the current legal system mainly focuses on 3 main issues: Disease treatment; Prevention and control of infectious diseases; Management of some health-harmful behaviors (alcohol, tobacco, environmental destruction, family support, etc.) that have absolutely no regulations to regulate issues related to nutrition with health, mental health, non-communicable disease management, disease prevention fund.
The draft Law proposes to remove regulations on a specific list of infectious diseases but only stipulate how to determine groups of infectious diseases and decentralize to the Minister of Health to stipulate the criteria for determining groups of infectious diseases and classifying infectious diseases according to control capability. At the same time, supplement regulations on the classification and level of infectious diseases.
