Central North Region Health Support Project

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The development objective of the Central North Region Health Support Project for Vietnam is to strengthen district level curative and preventive health services and improve their accessibility for the economically vulnerable population in the Central North provinces. There are four components to the project. The first component of the project is supporting health insurance for the near poor population. This component aims to expand access to health insurance for near poor households in the Central North region and to improve the system's capacity to manage health insurance. It will do so by: (i) subsidizing health insurance for the near poor; (ii) conducting a social marketing and information and education campaign; and (iii) strengthening institutional capacities for the administration of health insurance. The second component of the project is strengthening district health services. This component aims to: (i) improve the capacity of district hospitals to provide basic curative health services to the population; and (ii) strengthen the capacity of district preventive health centers to carry out basic public health functions. This will be done through providing basic medical equipment and ambulances to 30 district hospitals, and building and equipping 30 districts preventive health centers. The component will also include a Results Based Financing (RBF) pilot to improve the performance of hospitals and preventive health centers in Nghe An province. The third component of the project is improving supply and quality of human resources for health. The objective of this component is to strengthen the capacity of existing medical educational institutions and to improve skills and knowledge of already practicing medical personnel. This will be done through providing teaching equipment to medical colleges in selected provinces; supporting upgrading of Nghe An medical college to medical university; training of trainers; and combination of short- and long-term medical training of health care personnel. The fourth component of the project is project management, monitoring, and evaluation. The aim of this component is to ensure adequate management structure, processes and human resource capacities for the project, and to set up mechanisms for effective monitoring of activities and evaluation of results.