Vietnam’s southern economic hub Ho Chi Minh City and Japan’s fourth-largest city of Nagoya have agreed to cooperate in potential areas such as healthcare and medical waste treatment, among other collaboration projects.

The agreement was reached at the meeting held in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday between municipal chairman Phan Van Mai and Prof. Nagato Natsume, a Japanese doctor who was appointed as Honorary Consul of Vietnam in Nagoya city of Japan’s Aichi prefecture in 2017.

Chairman Mai told his guest that the city is determined to cooperate comprehensively with Aichi in general and Nagoya in particular, especially in projects to develop healthcare and social welfare services for people.

Cooperation between the two cities as well as medical facilities of both sides over recent time has gained significant results and needs to be brought into play, Mai commented. 

“Healthcare cooperation is very important to Ho Chi Minh City. As the municipality accommodates over 10 million people, the local government is very interested in medical and social welfare development for the sake of people,” the city’s chief stated.

Following initial collaborations, the two sides now can proceed with larger cooperation steps, in which Nagoya can provide knowledge, experience and necessary conditions for Ho Chi Minh City to implement a comprehensive health care program for local residents.

In addition to healthcare, Mai said that the municipal administration welcomes businesses from Nagoya to do business in other fields, including trade and investment, in the city.

On the contrary, the city also wants to see more Vietnamese enterprises to do business in Nagoya and Japan in general, he added.   

Highly appreciating Mai’s comments and suggestions for cooperation in the field of heath, Prof. Natsume Nagato revealed that experts from Nagoya are collecting information on a pre-feasibility project to build a medical waste recycling process and another process for household waste treatment. 

There are plenty of precious metals in medical waste that can be recycled and reused, but Ho Chi Minh City, due to its technological limitations, has yet to be able to recycle that source of metals, resulting in a great waste, the Japanese doctor commented.

Therefore, Nagoya is willing to share high technologies with Ho Chi Minh City to improve medical waste recycling capability in the city.

Highly welcoming Natsume’s proposals, Chairman Mai directed relevant agencies to give support to all potential cooperation projects between Nagoya and Ho Chi Minh City.

Attending the meeting via an online connection, Mayor of Nagoya Takashi Kawamura briefed Mai about the Japanese city’s socio-economic situation.

Kawamura highly valued the Vietnamese official’s proposals and said that they would soon be considered for implementation in the near future.

Since being appointed by the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Honorary Consul of Vietnam in Nagoya in September 2017, Natsume has made contributions to the development of relations between Vietnam and Nagoya, especially in the field of health. 

Notably, he has supported the implementation of more than 4,000 cleft palate surgeries for Vietnamese children and the provision of loans for poor households with disabled children in Vietnam to do business.

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