Queen Mathilde of Belgium visits Vietnam National Children's Hospital

Queen Mathilde of Belgium and Vietnam National Children's Hospital staff on Tuesday. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Queen Mathilde of Belgium on April 1 visited the Vietnam National Children's Hospital in Hà Nội, which reflected the strong public healthcare cooperation between the two countries, particularly in the field of child mental health.

The Queen and her entourage, who are accompanying King Philippe in a state visit to Việt Nam, were welcomed by Minister of Health Đào Hồng Lan and the hospital's Director Trần Minh Diên.

For more than 30 years, Belgium and Việt Nam have implemented numerous effective cooperation programs in this field.

Currently, the Vietnam National Children's Hospital is engaged in a partnership with Léonard de Vinci College under the 2022-2024 cooperation programme between the Vietnamese Government and the French Community of Belgium in Wallonia region.

It focuses on training human resources, research collaboration on developmental disorders, and the implementation of Belgian therapeutic models in Việt Nam. The initiative also includes support for improving infrastructure, providing medical equipment, and upgrading therapeutic spaces at the Vietnamese hospital.

The Queen is a psychologist and speech therapy specialist, as well as the Honorary President of UNICEF Belgium. She has a deep concern for health issues, particularly children's health. This visit serves as an important opportunity to highlight the long-standing cooperation between Việt Nam and Belgium in this field, while also raising awareness of the importance of mental health care for children in Việt Nam.

During this visit, the Queen met with doctors, psychologists, and patients at the Vietnam National Children's Hospital.

The Queen, along with Minister Lan, participated in an art therapy session, where they painted with adolescents and young people, and observed a psychomotor therapy session at the hospital's Psychiatry Department. Additionally, the Queen took the time to converse with and offer her best wishes to the young patients undergoing treatment at the hospital.

Health care cooperation between Việt Nam and Belgium has been ongoing since the 1990s. One of the first collaborative healthcare projects between the two countries was the malaria prevention and control in Hòa Bình Province project, which ran from 1996 to 2001.

The project yielded excellent results, and over the six years of its implementation, the malaria situation in Hòa Bình significantly improved. The malaria prevention and control network across the northern mountainous locality was strengthened, with notable improvements in infrastructure, equipment, and staff capacity.

Both sides highly value the outcomes achieved through collaborative projects among universities, research institutes, and hospitals in Việt Nam and their counterparts in Belgium in the healthcare sector.

These projects have played an important role in Việt Nam's efforts to improve public health, thereby contributing to the country's socio-economic development and international integration. They have also helped lay the foundation for strengthening and expanding the partnership between Việt Nam and the Wallonia-Brussels region in particular, and Belgium as a whole. — VNS