Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on April 3 received President of Microsoft Corp and the world’s richest man Bill Gates and his wife who are on a working visit to Vietnam.
The couple’s visit to Vietnam in their capacity as representatives for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the aim of stimulating charitable activity in the medical field is quite different from the first visit one year ago, which focused only on information and technology and software copyrights.
Mr Dung said he is very happy to meet Mr Gates again and expressed his appreciation for positive changes in the cooperative relations between Microsoft and Vietnam in general and FPT company in particular after his visit to Vietnam in April last year.
Mr Gates said the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to promote global healthcare activities, reduce poverty and boost education.
During their stay, the couple visited a number of local medical centres and a hospital in Hanoi’ Dong Anh district to learn about fatal diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. They praised Vietnam’s immunization programme for children as the most effective in the world and considered it a typical example of vaccination against hepatitis B.
Mr Dung described their visit as a demonstration of special sentiments towards Vietnam, its land and people as it will assist Vietnam in community-based medical activities.
He said Vietnam also aims to boost socio-economic development and provide medical care for people, particularly young people. As a result, the number of vaccinated people has sharply increased with up to 95 percent of children being immunized against fatal diseases. In addition, community-based healthcare networks have been expanded to every hamlet, commune and village to raise self-responsibility for healthcare among local people. However, Vietnam is still finding it difficult to produce vaccines, especially vaccine against hepatitis B and currently running short of vaccines for children. Therefore, the country wants the foundation to help it overcome these difficulties, Mr Dung noted.
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