Will a nationwide portal help reduce antibiotics abuse?
By early 2019, 7,700 pharmacies across the country will be connected through a portal from which the government can oversee drug sales and distribution, Tuoi Tre reports.
Authorities are hoping that the transparency offered by this portal can help reduce the sales of antibiotics without doctors' prescriptions.
The portal will connect pharmacies' management software with the Ministry of Health and cities' Public Health Department. Currently, 80% of pharmacies are using the management software provided by the Ministry of Health. Pharmacies that use other management software will be required to use an intermediary program provided by Viettel in order to connect to the portal.
Many pharmacies are, however, reluctant to connect because they have to pay a fee of 1.8 million per year. Addressing this concern, the health ministry said that the new initiative will be legally enforced. Entities that failed to comply will be forced to shut down.
"I feel like using technology to manage pharmacies can only alleviate the issue from a distribution standpoint but the quality of prescriptions is still left unsolved," said Nguyen Huu Tung, deputy director of Medical Practitioner of Ho Chi Minh City.
According to a report on Vietnamnet in 2017, statistics from Cho Ray Hospital reveal that 50% of antibiotics are prescribed wrongly to patients by doctors.
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