The Ministry of Health is drafting a circular guiding a number of contents of the Law on Disease Prevention, which proposes to establish a comprehensive monitoring system for non-communicable diseases and related risk factors in the community.
The draft clearly states the groups of subjects to be monitored, including people with non-communicable diseases, people who die from these diseases, people at risk of disease and disease-causing risk factors.
In which, the common disease group that will be monitored includes many types of cancer such as liver cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer.
Besides, there are cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, stroke; metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes; chronic respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma; along with chronic kidney disease.
In addition, the Ministry of Health also plans to monitor all deaths from non-communicable diseases to have sufficient data to serve management and disease prevention.
The draft circular also expands the scope of supervision for people at risk of disease, that is, people with at least one risk factor.
Risk factors related to lifestyle include smoking, alcohol consumption, unbalanced diet, and lack of physical activity.
Metabolic risk groups include high blood pressure, overweight or obesity (BMI above 23), large waist circumference (above 80cm for women and over 90cm for men), high blood sugar and dyslipidemia.
In addition, the draft also includes environmental factors under monitoring such as air pollution with PM2.5 fine dust, CO gas; soil and water pollution by heavy metals such as lead, mercury and arsenic. Some other factors such as family history of illness, race, age and gender are also considered.
According to the draft, the monitoring system will collect detailed information for each target group.
For non-communicable patients, health agencies will record personal information such as full name, identification code, age, gender, occupation, residential address and phone number. At the same time, update data on disease diagnosis, time of disease detection, diagnostic medical facility and treatment process.
In cases of death due to non-communicable diseases, in addition to personal information, the system will record the time and place of death, medical examination and treatment status within 30 days before death and the cause of death according to international disease classification codes.
Data on disease progression, pre-death symptoms, chronic disease history and treatment processes will also be collected.
For people at risk of the disease, the system will assess lifestyle-related factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity level, and diet.
The Ministry of Health said that monitoring will be carried out regularly combined with periodic surveys, in which every 5 years there will be a national survey on non-communicable disease risk factors. The synchronous monitoring system is expected to help grasp the disease situation and build effective disease prevention policies.
