DECISION

RATIFYING THE 2002-2010 NATIONAL POLICY FOR ACCIDENT AND INJURY PREVENTION AND FIGHT

THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the Law on Organization of the Government of September 30, 1992;
At the proposal of the Minister of Health,

DECIDES:

Article 1.- To ratify the 2002-2010 national policy for accident and injury prevention and fight, with the following major contents:

1. Objectives:

a/ General objectives: To step by step restrict accidents and injuries in all social life’s fields, including communications and transport, labor and production, family life, at schools and public places... so as to achieve positive results in ensuring safety for people’s life and the State’s properties, ensuring people’s happiness, thus contributing to the maintenance of sustainable development of the nation in all economic, political and social aspects.

b/ Specific objectives:

- To raise the awareness and sense of responsibility of agencies, organizations and individuals, thus changing their behaviors and life styles to the proper ones in order to restrict accidents and injuries.

- To socialize the accident and injury prevention and fight work, raising a deep concern of the administrations of all levels, social organizations and the entire people about accident and injury prevention and fight.

- To apply resolute and timely measures in order to step by step restrict accidents and injuries, especially serious accidents.

- To reduce, by 2010, the number of accidents at schools by 40%, in labor and production by 30%, in family and community by 30% as compared to figures of 2000. To reduce the number of traffic accident fatalities from 14 to 11 by 2005 and to 9 by 2010, per 10,000 transport means.

2. Solutions:

a/ To enhance the leadership and direction of the ministries, branches and People’s Committees of all levels for the accident and injury prevention and fight work, ensuring safety for people.

- To clearly determine accident and injury prevention and fight as one of the important tasks of socio-economic development strategies in localities, which must be concretized into action plans and programs. To clearly determine concrete objectives and measures in the resolutions of the People’s Councils at all levels, the plans of the People’s Committees at all levels as well as the ministries, branches, economic organizations and social organizations.

- The relevant ministries, branches and People’s Committees at all levels shall assign one of their divisions to advise on and regularly monitor this work, which shall be personally directed by a deputy head of the agency to organize the accident and injury prevention and fight work. The advisory division shall work out a specific program of action, conduct regular evaluation and review the implementation thereof, and propose to the local Party committee and administration active undertakings and measures to raise the efficiency of the accident and injury prevention and fight work.

- To make contents of the accident and injury prevention and fight program one of the targets of emulation movements in localities, branches and units and incorporate them into other movements such as the building of cultured villages, cultured families, social evil prevention and fight, etc.

- To train and foster a personnel contingent for this work, to raise the knowledge and organizational as well as directional skills of officials at all levels, paying special attention to the inspection and supervision of task performance by lower levels, strictly observing the periodical reporting regime.

b/ To organize regular propagation and education about accident and injury prevention and fight; incorporate and combine this work with political activities of agencies, organizations and population communities. The educational contents shall cover the Party’s undertakings and policies and the State’s laws on accident and injury prevention and fight, ensuring safety in all domains of the social life. The education concurrently aims to raise the people’s awareness of the likely dangers and the ways to prevent and fight accidents and injuries in all circumstances. To enhance educational activities regarding accident and injury prevention and fight in schools.

c/ To improve the environmental hygiene, working conditions as well as working facilities and traffic..., doing away with dangers so that people can live and work in a safer environment and under safer conditions.

- To upgrade traffic ways (motor roads, railways, sea routes, river ways), including national, inter-provincial and inter-district ways. Especially, to concentrate efforts on clearing traffic accident-prone places on high-speed traffic routes. To strengthen and supplement the system of traffic signals on traffic arteries.

- To organize regular inspection of land, sea and air communication and transport means, equipment and machinery at railway stations, airports, seaports, factories, construction sites, irrigation systems, civil constructions, power transmission systems and other fundamental projects. To detect, promptly handle and redress technical errors in order to ensure safety for the process of using and operating projects, equipment and machinery.

In each hamlet, village, residential quarter, school and family, to regularly inspect and detect accident-prone dangers in order to work out remedies.

To enhance labor safety examination and inspection work, ensuring the strict observance of labor discipline as well as labor and production safety under the guideline "production must be safe, safety for production".

- To organize the management of social environment, make localities clear of social evils and crimes, and family and social relations healthy in order to preclude violence. To detect and promptly settle family and community disputes in order to prevent and reconcile those which may lead to the forced suicides or suicides, which seem to be on the rise.

d/ To elaborate, supplement and finalize the legislation on accident and injury prevention and fight, ensuring social order, security and safety, creating a legal corridor for all people to follow. To attach special importance to the legislation on traffic, labor protection, irrigation works protection, fire and explosion prevention and fight, use of chemicals in agriculture, social order and security, environmental hygiene in production, business and daily life.

To raise the capability and sense of responsibility of agencies evaluating the quality of motorized vehicles and transport means of driver-training and driving license-granting establishments as well as drivers of all types, thus avoiding serious consequences of negative phenomena in this field.

To ensure close coordination among functional branches in regularly organizing general inspection of driver-training establishments and comprehensive evaluation of their capacities, quality and contents of training programs as well as the driving license-granting process in order to train a contingent of high-quality drivers.

e/ To establish a system of monitoring, summing up, analyzing and classifying accidents and injuries as well as losses incurred in each geographical area and each period in order to grasp the development, tendency and causes of accidents and injuries, thereby applying timely and effective undertakings and measures.

f/ The health service must make comprehensive and thoughtful preparation of resources, including means, medicines and manpower in order to give prompt first-aid to victims and well organize treatment and functional rehabilitation.

To organize first-aid systems where it is necessary so that injured persons may be taken to the first-aid stations in the quickest and safest manner. The medical establishments, especially those at district and commune levels, should assess properly and accurately the quantity, frequency and seriousness of accidents and injuries in their respective localities, listing the regularly used means and medicines in order to take initiative in preparing and arranging personnel to rescue victims promptly and effectively. The medical establishments, including ward and commune medical stations as well as hospitals near important transport arteries, shall be more adequately equipped and medical workers shall be better trained in first-aid skills. To organize first-aid skill-training for medical workers and inhabitants in hamlets and villages.

To strengthen the capacity of district-, provincial- and central-level hospitals in giving first-aid to victims, paying special attention to serious cases. To well organize treatment and functional rehabilitation.

3. Organization of implementation:

a/ The ministries and branches shall, according to their functions and tasks, coordinate with administrations of all levels and social organizations to create a combined strength of the entire society in the work of accident and injury prevention and fight in all domains of the social life. In such coordination, each ministry and branch shall, depending on their functions have to play the key role in the field under their respective management.

The People’s Committees at all levels shall have to direct and organize coordination among agencies under their management and economic and social organizations in their respective localities in order to perform the task of accident and injury prevention and fight.

b/ The Health Ministry shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned agencies in directing the organization of the rescue, treatment, health care and functional rehabilitation for victims; guide the entire population to use medicines in a safe manner and ensure food hygiene and safety, thus preventing and precluding food poisoning; assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with other agencies in monitoring, summing up and classifying accidents and injuries; take the prime responsibility and coordinate with the other ministries and branches as well as the People’s Committees of the provinces and centrally-run cities in intensively deploying the accident and injury prevention and fight work, in order to build up models of safe community- provinces, cities, districts, provincial capitals, communes and schools..., summing up experiences for the further formulation of safe population communities in the whole country.

c/ The Ministry of Culture and Information shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in programming and carrying out activities of information, propagation and education about accident and injury prevention and fight on the mass media.

d/ The Ministry of Communications and Transport shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security and the National Committee for Traffic Safety in elaborating detailed plans to strengthen the capability of traffic control force, preventing and fighting accidents in key localities and domains, with regard to transport means prone to cause accidents and injuries; propose the Government to promulgate new undertakings, policies, rules and regulations on traffic so as to enhance traffic order and safety, diminish accidents in this field.

e/ The Ministry of Education and Training shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in implementing the program on schoolchildren’s health, including the contents on accident and injury prevention and fight; building safe schools and compiling documents on accident and injury-prevention and -fight education in schools.

f/ The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in guiding and regularly inspecting the implementation of regulations on labor hygiene and safety and applying measures to ensure safety in labor and production.

g/ The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in well implementing law provisions and applying measures on flood and storm prevention and fight as well as dyke protection, guiding peasants to preserve and use chemicals in agriculture in a safe manner.

h/ The Ministry of Industry shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in ensuring safety for mineral exploitation; production and use of chemicals as well as use of electricity, especially in rural areas.

i/ Vietnam Committee for Child Protection and Care shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in guiding and regularly inspecting the observance of regulations on accident and injury prevention and fight for children.

j/ The Committee for Physical Training and Sports shall assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the concerned ministries and branches in guiding and regularly inspecting the implementation of regulations on accident and injury prevention and fight and ensuring safety for athletes and sport club members to participate in physical training and sport activities.

k/ The other ministries, branches and localities shall take initiative in coordinating with the relevant ministries and branches to organize accident and injury prevention and fight in the branches and fields under their respective management, apportioning regular funding of their respective ministries, branches and localities for the performance of the task of accident and injury prevention and fight.

l/ Vietnam Fatherland Front’s Central Committee and member organizations are requested to coordinate with different branches and levels in encouraging people throughout the country to actively participate in accident and injury prevention and fight activities, thus contributing to raising the quality of people’s life, accelerating the process of national socio-economic development.

m/ Basing themselves on the national policy on accident and injury prevention and fight, the ministries and ministerial-level agencies shall work out their own programs of action for accident and injury prevention and fight; the provincial-level People’s Committees shall elaborate programs of action for accident and injury prevention and fight for their respective localities.

c/ To set up the National Steering Committee for Accident and Injury Prevention and Fight, which shall assist the Prime Minister in directing and organizing the performance of the task of accident and injury prevention and fight in the whole country.

The Minister of Health shall be the head of the National Steering Committee. The Ministry of Health shall be the standing body of the National Steering Committee for Accident and Injury Prevention and Fight.

Article 2.- This Decision takes effect 15 days after its signing.

Article 3.- The ministers, the heads of the ministerial-level agencies, the heads of the agencies attached to the Government and the presidents of the People’s Committees of the provinces and centrally-run cities shall have to implement this Decision.