(VOVworld) – President Truong Tan Sang has hailed efforts made by Ho Chi Minh City’s Pasteur Institute over the past 40 years in contribution to Vietnam’s preventive medicine sector. He presented the title “the Hero of Labour” to the Ho Chi Minh City-based Institute at a ceremony on Sunday.
Earlier, the Institute hosted a seminar on scientific research for community health on Saturday. Delegates heard 71 reports on preventive medicine issues with huge impacts on people’s lives and government’s policy making, such as dengue fever and newly-emerged infectious diseases, HIV, hepatitis, and other issues related to vaccine research.
The Institute Pasteur in Ho Chi Minh City was founded in 1891 by Doctor Albert Calmette. The Institute is in charge of research and production of vaccines to help prevent rabies across Indochina at that time. In the first half of the 20th century, the Institute produced and provided vaccines to prevent smallpox, rabies, cholera, and plague for the entire Indochina. After 1975, the Institute has been in charge of implementing national projects on vaccination, and petechial fever and HIV/AIDS prevention in 20 southern provinces.