Participants included representatives from several embassies, development cooperation agencies, United Nations organisations, international banks, 12 medical universities, 7 hospitals and nine medical centres.

MoH Deputy Minister Le Quang Cuong said developing medical human resources plays an important role in improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare services,  adding human resources development is one of the sector’s 7 priorities in the 2011-2016 period.

Cuong said he hopes participants will put forward new training methods and share Government’s orientations and action plans in line with development partners’ contribution to the important field.

Dr Takeshi Kasai, Chief representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Vietnam, said the meeting aims to set two major orientations for the medical partnership group and Vietnam in the future – new working mechanisms for the medical partnership group and educational reform.

The first step towards improving the quality of healthcare services is to reform education and train medical staff, he said.

Delegates agreed that the number of medical staff has increased significantly in recent years, however, it does not meet the real demand, especially in the remote and mountainous areas. The quality of services has been improved but there remain many challenges.