Project News

Biosafety workshop was organized at NIHE on 14 July for review of project activities so far, and planning of expected project activities up to the end with a number of stakeholders. A total of 41 participants attended it from 4 regional institutes, northern PCPMs, Japanese experts, WHO Vietnam Office and so on.

Dr. Mai, vice-director of NIHE, made an opening speech and then Dr. Thuy, project manager, explained the purpose and outline of the workshop. And then Dr. Hieu, an EHA ((Emergency and Humanitarian Action Program) Officer of WHO Vietnam, gave a lecture on the main scheme of WHO for global public health, IHR: International Health Regulation (2005) and Asian public health, APSED: Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases (2010) where WHO WPRO regards the capacity strengthening of laboratory diagnosis in Vietnam as important issues and expects the project to support establishment of biosafety, laboratory network and quality management in Vietnam. In succession, from GDPM MoH: General Department of Preventive Medicine, Ministry of Health, perspective of strategies against infectious diseases in Vietnam was explained and anticipation was expressed that the project might support the activities meeting to the governmental strategies. Next, selected from GMT-targeted pathogens, Dr. Thu Ha and Dr. Thuyet Thu presented the outcome of GMT/Rabies and GMT/Anthrax, respectively, so far supported by the project, and the perspective of collaboration between NIHE and NIID for the promotion of GMT/biosafety training. In the next section, Dr. Thuy presented the outline of project activities in Vietnam, especially the northern region under the direction of NIHE.

In the afternoon, we reviewed the past activities and points to be accomplished in the project and discussed what has to be performed by the end of the project, based on the draft prepared by Dr. Thuy and advice from Japanese experts; Dr. Shinohara in biosafety and Mr. Miki in facility maintenance. We reached to the consensus that the project is encouraged to strengthen the activities of GMT training and TOT activities in the training of GMT and biosafety. Furthermore, we discussed the planning after the end of the project, based on the draft prepared by Dr. Thuy including the expectation from 4 regional institutes. In conclusion, we made a consensus that each regional institute should have a BSL-3 facility for establishment of rapid laboratory diagnosis system in Vietnam because outbreaks of infectious diseases could not be predicted when and where they might occur in Vietnam and that it might be necessary to have a new training center in NIHE in order to strengthen the laboratory network by expanding biosafety training to nationwide in TOT manner. Workshop was closed with reaching to the conclusion that we should continue to make a definite plan covering necessities and requirements from each region. This workshop provided a good opportunity to all of stakeholders related with the project in order to make a consensus about the past, the present and the future of the project activities.

Opening of biosafety workshop in NIHE

All of participants of biosafety workshop in NIHE