He stressed the need to increase the number of doctors, pharmacists and nurses to meet the increasing demand on health care and improvement of the people’s health.

He urged the ministries of Education and Training, Health, and Home Affairs to work together to outline regulations relating to the training of human resources for the health sector, in order to both improve the training quality and ensure medical workers’ interests.

The renovation of personnel training for the health sector is a long-term process, requiring a common direction of management agencies such the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Health, and the active involvement of the whole education and medicine systems, he noted.

According to Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, the number of medical workers increased significantly over the last five years. The number of doctors was 8 per 10,000 people in 2015 compared to 7.2 in 2010, and the number of pharmacists was 2.2 per 10,000 people in 2015 compared to 1.76 in 2010.

However, she cited difficulties and challenges facing the sector in human resources training.

The health ministry has studied to propose a training model while adjusting post-graduate training progammes through learning from and applying training methods of other countries, she said.

Participants focused their discussions on how to manage the training quality at medical schools and ways to organise the postgraduate system of the health sector as well as financial mechanism in training./.