How Vietnam Is Bringing Better Healthcare Closer to Rural Communities
Getting sick is difficult enough. But imagine needing to travel several hours just to reach a hospital that can properly treat you.
For many people living in rural and mountainous areas around the world, distance remains an important barrier to healthcare. Even when medical services technically exist, transportation costs, travel time, overcrowded hospitals, and shortages of specialists can make quality healthcare much harder to access.
Vietnam has been trying to address this problem by strengthening healthcare outside its biggest cities. With support from Japan through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Vietnam has worked to strengthen provincial hospitals, improve connections between different levels of healthcare, and more recently, expand the use of tele-health.
The idea is relatively simple:
Instead of always bringing patients to specialists, why not bring more medical knowledge closer to patients?
The Problem: Too Many Patients Depend on Major Hospitals
Vietnam has made significant progress in expanding healthcare access, but overcrowding at major hospitals has remained a challenge. Patients sometimes travel directly to large hospitals in cities because they believe these facilities have better doctors, equipment, and treatment options. The problem is that when too many patients do this, major hospitals become overcrowded.
At the same time, provincial and district hospitals may have the physical capacity to treat more patients but lack certain equipment, specialist knowledge, or experienced healthcare professionals. Vietnam has therefore invested in strengthening healthcare at the local level.
A World Bank-supported health project, for example, helped improve treatment capacity in provincial and district hospitals across 13 northern provinces. Around 3,000 medical techniques became available at these hospitals, and tens of thousands of residents were able to receive treatment using the newly introduced services.
Instead of thinking only about building more large hospitals, the country has increasingly focused on making the whole healthcare network work better.
Japan and JICA Have Supported This Transition
Japan has been involved in Vietnam's healthcare development for decades.
One important approach has been strengthening provincial hospitals so they can provide more advanced treatment locally.
Through Japanese development cooperation, medical equipment has been provided while healthcare workers have also received training and technical support.
For example, JICA's Regional and Provincial Hospital Development Project worked across 10 provinces and cities in Vietnam. The project focused not only on supplying medical equipment but also on developing healthcare workers and strengthening the overall capacity of provincial hospitals. JICA's later evaluation found that the project contributed to improvements in the quality of medical services in the targeted areas.
This is important because medical equipment alone cannot create a strong healthcare system.
A hospital may have advanced machines, but those machines have limited value without trained professionals who know how to use them, systems for referring patients, and communication between different hospitals. That is where the idea of a stronger referral system becomes important.
What Is a Referral System?
Think of healthcare as a connected network rather than a collection of separate hospitals. A patient might first visit a local health facility. If the problem can be treated there, there is no need to travel further. If more specialized care is required, the patient can be referred to a district or provincial hospital.
Only patients who genuinely require highly specialized treatment need to travel to a major central hospital.
In simple terms:
Local care → District hospital → Provincial hospital → Central specialist hospital
This can help patients receive the right level of healthcare without automatically travelling to the biggest hospital available.
But Vietnam is now adding another important tool to this system.
The Next Step: Tele-Health
What if a doctor working hundreds of kilometres away could receive support from a specialist without either the doctor or patient having to travel?
This is where tele-health becomes particularly interesting.
In 2025, JICA and Vietnam launched the Project for Strengthening Capacity Development System for Health Professionals through Tele-Health.
The project uses a Doctor-to-Doctor model. Rather than focusing mainly on online appointments between patients and doctors, specialists at higher-level hospitals can support healthcare professionals working at lower-level facilities.
Doctors can exchange medical knowledge, discuss difficult cases, and improve clinical decision-making remotely.
Pilot activities are being carried out in Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam, with the wider goal of improving access to quality healthcare in rural areas. The project also supports Vietnam's national strategy for digital transformation in healthcare.
And as of 2026, JICA continues to list the tele-health initiative among its ongoing projects in Vietnam.
Why This Approach Is Interesting
When we imagine improving healthcare, we often picture a new hospital. But building large hospitals everywhere would be extremely expensive and unrealistic.
Vietnam's approach demonstrates another possibility. Instead of duplicating every specialist and every piece of advanced medical equipment in every community, healthcare facilities can become better connected.
Knowledge can move through the system.
A local doctor can gain access to expertise from specialists elsewhere.
Provincial hospitals can handle more complicated cases.
And major hospitals can concentrate their resources on patients who genuinely require highly specialized treatment.
For people living outside major cities, that could mean receiving better healthcare without travelling as far.
Technology Can Reduce Distance
Tele-health cannot replace hospitals, doctors, or medical equipment.
But it can reduce one of healthcare's biggest geographical problems: knowledge is often concentrated in cities.
A specialist may physically work in Hanoi or another major urban centre. Digital technology makes it possible for some of that specialist knowledge to reach healthcare workers hundreds of kilometres away. This is particularly valuable for countries with large rural populations, mountainous regions, islands, or communities located far from major medical centres.
The concept could also become increasingly important as countries face ageing populations and growing rates of chronic diseases. Patients with diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and other long-term conditions often require continuous monitoring rather than one single hospital visit. Stronger local healthcare supported by digital connections could therefore become an important part of future healthcare systems.
A Different Way to Think About Development
International development projects are sometimes associated with building something visible.
A bridge.
A school.
A hospital.
But strengthening a system can be just as important.
Vietnam's healthcare efforts show how infrastructure, human resources, digital technology, and cooperation between different levels of healthcare can work together.
Japan's role through JICA has not simply been to provide medical equipment.
It has also included developing healthcare professionals and helping strengthen the connections between hospitals.
Today, tele-health is taking that idea another step forward.
Instead of asking:
“How can every community have a major hospital?”
perhaps the better question is:
“How can every community access the knowledge of a major hospital?”
Final Thoughts
Where someone lives should not determine the quality of healthcare they can receive.
Vietnam is working toward a system where provincial and local healthcare facilities can provide more services themselves while remaining connected to specialists at larger hospitals.
It is not one revolutionary invention.
Instead, it is an example of how a country can combine local investment, international cooperation, healthcare training, and digital technology to solve a real social problem.
And the idea goes far beyond Vietnam.
As technology makes communication easier, the future of healthcare may not always require patients to travel toward expertise.
Sometimes, expertise can travel toward them.
Related SDGs
SDG 3 — Good Health and Well-being
SDG 10 — Reduced Inequalities
References
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Project for Strengthening Capacity Development System for Health Professionals through Tele-Health in Viet Nam (2025).
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Regional and Provincial Hospital Development Project (II) – Ex-Post Evaluation Report.
World Bank. Vietnam’s Rural Populace Enjoys Better Healthcare Services Thanks to Smart Investment in Hospital Upgrading (2021).
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