Health system financing is a priority of the Vietnamese Government and a number of Development Partners (DPs) have been supporting this area. In order to prepare for the efficient and timely allocation and mobilization of finance and resources both domestically and externally to implement the five-year health plan 2016-2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it was decided at the vice-ministerial level that the theme for the first HPG quarterly meeting of 2017 would be the health financing strategy.

Accordingly, the HPG meeting quarter I/2017 took place in Hanoi on April 19, 2017 in the morning with the theme of“Viet Nam Health Financing Strategy for period 2016-2025”. The meeting was chaired by Assoc. Prof. Pham Le Tuan, Vice Minister of Health (MOH) of Viet Nam. At this meeting, he delivered the opening remarks to more than 200 participants from departments and agencies of MOH, DPs and organizations, provinces, research institutes and private sector.

In the opening remarks, Vice Minister Pham Le Tuan said that health financing system was a crucial part of the health system as a whole, which contributedsignificantly to the effectiveness of its operation. The current health financing system had partly eliminated the financial obstacles in medical service access for people with health insurance card, ensuring that a majority of people can access basic preventive health care services. However, there are challenges facing the health financing system, including overlapping health financial policies issued by different authorities which have created difficulties in the implementation process. This posed the need for an overall health financing strategy with long-term vision to unite the perception and action plans of national agencies as well as DPs The meeting is therefore seeks to introduce the Health Financing Strategy 2016-2025 and listens to DPs’ interests/ plans of support to MOH in implementing the Strategy.