Basic occupational health services in Vietnam

Introduction
Basic Occupational Health Services are most needed for countries and sectors that do not have services at all or which are seriously underserved. This paper described the current situation of basic occupational health services (BOHS) in Vietnam in terms of policy, human resources, infrastructure, contents and coverage of BOHS through a national survey on providing BOHS at different levels over the country. The legislative documents were reviewed. 

Methods
1590 facilities were investigated by questionnaires and a walkthrough was conducted in some specific preventive medicine facilities and OSH inspection departments at different levels. The workshop and group discussion were organized to discuss the needs of building capacities for preventive medicine facilities in BOHS provision.

Results
The results showed that in general the policy almost covered all regulations related to providing BOHS. Vietnam has a complete occupational health network from national level to grass root level in providing BOHS to workers in which the provincial preventive medicine facilities and different industry ministerial occupational health centers were the key organizations providing BOHS to enterprises and employees. Their capacities of providing BOHS were working environment monitoring, workers’ health surveillance (including pre-employment, periodic health examinations, occupational disease detection), OSH and first aid trainings, OSH information and propaganda, etc. There was lack of competent human resources related to BOHS. The BOHS coverage was low at different levels. At provincial level, the BOHS coverage was from 2.1-13% of enterprises and 3.7-32.8% of workers whereas at the industrial branches/sectors there was higher by 2-5 times. The contents and activities of BOHS in aspects of working environment surveillance, workers’ health surveillance, information, training, injury prevention, etc were all included as stipulated in ILO Convention No. 161 and ILO Recommendation No. 171.

Discussion
There were needs for strengthening BOHS capacities for all organizations providing BOHS at different levels and in all aspects.