Addressing the conference, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan said that drug support programmes have humane and practical meanings to patients, helping to reduce treatment costs and increase the rate of access to medical treatment, especially special medicines that have big treatment costs and have not yet covered by the Health Insurance Fund.

Besides positive implications, the programmes have also revealed a number of shortcomings and limitations that need to be adjusted and modified to suit the real treatment situation.

A representative of the Supportive Fund for Cancer Patients - Bright Tomorrow expressed the hope that sponsoring companies will continue to support the programmes so that more patients will have opportunities to continue their treatment until health insurance covers the treatment costs or there are alternative drugs. It also is necessary to simplify administrative procedures so that patients can participate in the programmes more easily.

Meanwhile, a representative of K Hospital said that each drug programme has different administrative procedures and implementation processes are not the same, therefore it takes more time to complete procedures before receiving the aided drugs. However, the costs of drugs are still high compared to patients' ability, forcing many of them to withdraw from the programmes.

Other hospitals also proposed the Ministry of Health consider shortening the approval time for drugs to optimise the “golden time” in treating cancer patients./.VNA