🇻🇳 Cancer in Viet Nam

GLOBOCAN 2024 gives Viet Nam 25,711 new breast cancers (age-standardised rate 38.51 per 100,000), 23,085 lung cancers (18.26), 22,584 colorectal cancers (17.78), 14,591 liver cancers (11.53), 12,373 stomach cancers (9.75), 12,223 thyroid cancers (10.09) and 8,274 cervical cancers (12.31 per 100,000 women). By deaths the order is lung (21,340), liver (13,664), colorectum (10,990), breast (10,609) and stomach (10,280); for liver cancer the estimated deaths are 94% of the estimated new cases. GLOBOCAN also estimates 3,354 nasopharyngeal cancers. The Ministry of Health's 2026 action plan says more than 60% of breast cancers in Viet Nam are found at stage III or IV. GLOBOCAN classes Viet Nam as lower-middle income with a population of about 101 million.

The authors of the Hanoi registry's 2025 breast cancer analysis, at the Vietnam National Cancer Institute and Hanoi Medical University, describe it as the first population-based cancer registry in Vietnam, established in 1987 under IARC guidelines. Until 2018 trained registrars visited hospitals each year to find new cases; since 2019 it has used active and passive, paper and electronic collection from 46 hospitals (42 public, four private) that diagnose and treat cancer in Hanoi, cross-checking new cases against health insurance numbers to avoid duplicates. A 2019 projection study used 2004 to 2013 data from the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City registries supplied by the National Cancer Institute, and Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital's doctors have published trends from their city's registry for 1996 to 2015. The Ministry of Health's 2026 action plan describes a national cancer surveillance and registration system that does not yet record people who were screened or had benign findings, and calls routine provincial data incomplete.

The Hanoi Cancer Registry counted 28,298 breast cancers in women from 1991 to 2020; the age-standardised rate rose from 15.2 per 100,000 to 40.6, an average of 4.1% a year, fastest in women aged 70 and over, and women born in 1976 to 1980 had higher rates than earlier generations. The authors note that the 2012 expansion of K Hospital, which they call Vietnam's largest cancer centre, likely improved diagnosis and reporting. For head and neck cancer the same registry counted 19,589 cases (74% in men); the rate went from 10.9 per 100,000 in 1991 to 1995 to 18.8 in 2006 to 2010 and 11.8 in 2016 to 2020, and nasopharyngeal and sinonasal cancers fell from 68% to 21% of men's cases. In Ho Chi Minh City's registry the age-standardised rate of colorectal cancer rose from 10.5 to 17.9 per 100,000 over 1996 to 2015, faster in men (4.7% a year) than in women (2.6%), with rectal cancer rising fastest.

Article 22 of the Law on Health Insurance, as rewritten by Law No. 51/2024/QH15 (in force from 1 July 2025, with the provisions on referral and levels of care from 1 January 2025), sets the fund's share of covered costs: 100% for groups named in the law, 100% when one visit costs less than a level set by the government, 100% at primary care facilities, 100% once a member with five continuous years of insurance has co-paid more than six times the reference level in a year, 95% for other named groups, and 80% for everyone else. Going to a hospital outside one's registration without referral reduces the fund's share, for example to 40% of the usual benefit for inpatient care at a specialist hospital. Vietnam Social Security's year-end figures, reported on 1 January 2026, estimate about 195.5 million insured visits in 2025 and about 161,628 billion dong in costs submitted for payment. Since 2025 Vietnam Social Security has been a special unit under the Ministry of Finance. Politburo Resolution 72-NQ/TW of 9 September 2025 sets a goal of free basic hospital care within insurance benefits by 2030, to come in stages.

Circular 01/2025/TT-BYT, which guides the amended law, lists 62 diseases and disease groups for which insured people can be diagnosed and treated at specialist-level hospitals with full benefits and no referral, 167 that can be treated at basic-level hospitals, and 141 for which a referral stays valid for a year, according to the head of the Ministry of Health's Health Insurance Department, Tran Thi Trang, as reported by SGGP on 3 January 2025. Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital said nine of the 62 groups are cancers it usually treats. K Hospital's director, Le Van Quang, said 20,000 insured patients being treated there would not need a new referral letter in the new year, and the hospital said that patients with malignant tumours and in situ tumours could use a referral for one year. SGGP reports that the patient must have the disease confirmed by a lower-level facility to go straight to a specialist hospital. Referrals and follow-up appointments can also be issued electronically through the national VNeID identity app, in a pilot. The annex listing the 62 diseases was not read for this page (see gaps).

Circular 37/2024/TT-BYT, in force from 1 January 2025, says a single-ingredient medicine is considered for the list only if it is registered with the Drug Administration, appears in a WHO, Ministry of Health or other recognised guideline, has a budget impact report for Viet Nam, and has evidence on cost-effectiveness in Viet Nam or a systematic review of it, Vietnamese evidence preferred. Medicines with high treatment costs or budget impact, or costlier than listed alternatives, can be given a payment rate below 100% or tighter conditions, and a company's price reduction can be taken into account. Cancer medicines are paid when prescribed by a doctor licensed in oncology, nuclear medicine or haematology at a facility approved to treat cancer; elsewhere a guideline or a consultation with an oncologist is needed. The ministry must review the list at least every two years, advised by an expert council on safety, efficacy and health economics. The fund paid nearly 9,600 billion dong for cancer and immune-modulating medicines in 2025, 16.4% of its spending on medicines. A 2024 Vietnamese model put one year of adjuvant trastuzumab, reimbursed at 60%, at 519.6 million dong per quality-adjusted life year, above three times GDP per head; the circular names no threshold.

Dan Tri reported on 28 May 2026 that the Ministry of Health expected to issue the circular with the new list in the second quarter, adding 84 medicines of which 30 are for cancer (35.7% of the additions), the largest group, because many new cancer medicines have been registered in Viet Nam in recent years; the paper called it the largest update of the list in eight years. Nguoi Lao Dong reported on 18 June 2026, from the ministry's reply to voters, that some proposed medicines costing 50 to 60 million dong a vial would be paid at 30% to 70%. On 26 September 2026 SGGP reported the ministry's reply to voters in Vinh Long: the list is being reviewed and amended, will add some new cancer medicines, monoclonal antibodies and immunotherapies, will set payment rates to suit what patients and the fund can afford, and would extend payment for 349 medicines to primary care facilities. No signed circular was found by 4 November 2026; until one is issued the 2022 list applies.

Circular 32/2026/TT-BYT of 29 July 2026, issued under the Law on Pharmacy as amended by Law No. 44/2024/QH15, sets the processing times from receipt of an application: no more than 12 months for a medicine; no more than 9 months for one using the reliance route; no more than 6 months for priority cases under Article 7(5) of the Law on Pharmacy; and 15 days for a new medicine against a declared group A epidemic. The Ministry of Justice's introduction to the 2024 law describes the 9-month route as a cut from 12 months for applications that reference another regulator's assessment. The reference regulators are the European Medicines Agency and the listed stringent regulators: the US FDA, the regulators of European Union countries, the United Kingdom's MHRA, Japan's PMDA, Swissmedic, Health Canada, and Australia, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. A relying application must include the reference regulator's final assessment report, covering quality, non-clinical and clinical data and the benefit-risk assessment, and a table comparing it with the Vietnamese dossier. Experts assess each dossier and an advisory council appointed by the Minister of Health reviews them.

Article 19 of Circular 32/2026/TT-BYT exempts a new medicine (other than a vaccine) from clinical trials in Viet Nam when it is approved in at least one country, has the complete clinical data the circular requires, and its trial data are enough to analyse the effect of Asian ethnicity on safety and efficacy under the ICH E5 guideline; the Minister can waive some trial phases for rare or serious diseases or for medicines approved by a reference regulator on a reduced clinical dossier. A first registration of a new medicine, vaccine or biological is valid for three years, other registrations for five, and a licence stays in force while a renewal application filed on time is being decided. The Ministry of Justice's introduction to Law No. 44/2024/QH15 says the law lets hospitals import medicines not registered in Viet Nam for the special treatment needs of their patients, and lets unregistered medicines be imported for clinical trials approved by the Ministry of Health without an import licence. For a cancer medicine, registration is only the first step: insurance pays only once it is on the Ministry of Health's list.

Decision 358/QD-BYT of 3 February 2026 records that the 2016 to 2025 national plan (Decision 5240/QD-BYT) aimed for at least 25% of girls vaccinated against HPV and 60% screening coverage of women aged 30 to 54 by 2025. It cites the 2020 to 2021 survey of children and women: 28.2% of women aged 30 to 49 had ever been screened by any method, highest in the Red River Delta and South East regions, with Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City above 30%, against 15.3% in the northern mountains and 0.9% among Hmong women; 12% of women aged 15 to 29 had had an HPV vaccine. Provincial reports show women aged 30 to 54 screened rising from about 729,000 to about 1.71 million a year between 2020 and 2024. The national WHO STEPS surveys found 24.86% of women had ever been screened in 2015 and 16.36% in 2021. The plan states that insurance does not pay for screening HPV tests or mammography. Its targets: 35% of women aged 30 to 49 tested with a high-performance test by 2030 and 70% by 2035, moving from cytology and visual inspection to HPV DNA or mRNA testing, including self-sampling, and incidence below 4 per 100,000 women by 2035.

The 2026 action plan says breast screening is carried out in some places but there is no national programme, that about 22.4% of women have ever had a clinical breast examination and 18.8% examine their breasts monthly, that few women aged 40 to 70 have regular mammograms, and that mammography is less common in rural than urban women (18% against 32%). It sets targets for 2030 and 2035: 50% and 70% of women aged 40 to 70 examined and screened, 50% and 80% of those with suspicious findings diagnosed within 60 days, 40% and 60% of invasive breast cancers found at stage I or II, and breast cancer mortality falling by 2.5% a year. Bao Van Hoa reported on 2 June 2026 that Circular 13/2026/TT-BYT, in force from 1 July 2026, added HPV to the diseases covered by the Expanded Programme on Immunization, with free quadrivalent vaccine first for girls aged 12 in four upland provinces, about 18,900 girls a year in grade 6 or out of school, before any wider roll-out. The plan targets 90% of girls aged 9 to 15 fully vaccinated in the areas where it is offered.

Resolution 72-NQ/TW of 9 September 2025, signed by General Secretary To Lam, sets goals for 2030: from 2026 people receive a free periodic health check or screening at least once a year and an electronic health record to manage their health over the life course; by 2030 people are exempt from basic hospital fees within insurance benefits, in stages, starting with social policy groups, vulnerable and low-income people; and insurance coverage above 95% by 2026. It asks for the free checks to be combined with school, occupational and workers' health checks and insured care, for the insurance fund to raise its payment for prevention, diagnosis and early treatment of some diseases from 2026 alongside higher contributions from 2027, and for the state budget and the fund to pay for some prevention, chronic disease management and screening at primary and basic care. The resolution does not name cancer screening tests; the Ministry of Health's breast and cervical plan cites it as the policy it puts into practice.

K-DETEK (NCT05227261), published in BMC Medicine in 2025, enrolled 9,057 people without symptoms at 75 hospitals and one research institute in Viet Nam and followed them for 12 months. Of 9,024 eligible, 43 (0.48%) tested positive and 17 were confirmed to have cancer, a positive predictive value of 39.53%; the predicted organ of origin was right in 9 of the 17. Among those who tested negative, 8,974 of 8,981 stayed free of cancer for a year. The authors describe it as a prospective validation of a multi-cancer test in a lower-middle-income country and suggest such tests could add to national screening where programmes are limited; no national programme uses it, and whether screening with it reduces deaths has not been tested. The trial records list Hanoi Medical University, Hanoi Oncology Hospital, Hue Central Hospital and Can Tho Oncology Hospital among the collaborators.

Counted from ClinicalTrials.gov participation data in OnCo's graph on 4 November 2026: 70 trials list Vietnam among their countries, 63 of them phase 3 and 7 phase 2. OnCo's records mark 20 as recruiting and 31 as active; ClinicalTrials.gov gives 42 as active and not recruiting, 21 recruiting and 7 completed. AstraZeneca is lead sponsor of 53 and Merck Sharp & Dohme of 6; non-small cell lung cancer is the first-listed cancer for 30 and hepatocellular carcinoma for 7, including HIMALAYA, EMERALD-1 and EMERALD-3. The smallest are a phase 3 trial of ADI-PEG 20 in hepatocellular carcinoma with high arginine levels, listing two countries, a phase 2 trial of RBS2418 in colorectal cancer listing three, and CONCUR, the Asian phase 3 trial of regorafenib in colorectal cancer, listing five. OnCo's OpenAlex snapshot of 8 September 2026 also records 1,304 ClinicalTrials.gov studies of all conditions with a site in Viet Nam.

OpenAlex, counting works whose primary topic is oncology and counting a paper for every country among its authors' affiliations, gives Viet Nam 145 works in 2021, 161 in 2022, 149 in 2023, 220 in 2024 and 233 in 2025, 908 in total, of which 643 are open access and 20 highly cited. K Hospital, the Vietnam National Cancer Hospital, traces its origin to the Institut Curie de l'Indochine opened in Hanoi on 19 October 1923 and was founded by a Ministry of Health decision of 17 July 1969; it has three sites in Hanoi, 74 institutes, centres and departments and nearly 2,000 staff, and its director is Le Van Quang. Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital marked 40 years on 15 May 2025. Researchers from both hospitals publish the registry trends on this page with Hanoi Medical University, Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine and partners in the United States and Australia.

Every request to moh.gov.vn, dav.gov.vn and baohiemxahoi.gov.vn on 4 November 2026 failed during the secure connection. The Drug Administration and Vietnam Social Security home pages were read from Internet Archive copies of 18 May and 7 October 2026. Circulars 37/2024 and 32/2026 and Decision 358/QD-BYT were read from the signed PDFs as posted by provincial portals and a medical university, and the amended health insurance law from the full text on a provincial portal; thuvienphapluat.vn and luatvietnam.vn refused our requests with 403. Coverage and spending figures for 2025 are Vietnam Social Security's year-end estimates as reported by Thoi bao Tai chinh, a Ministry of Finance newspaper, and the medicines spending figure is the Ministry of Health's as reported by Nguoi Lao Dong.

No national cancer registry report was found; the registry figures on this page are the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City registries' own published analyses, and the national figures are GLOBOCAN's modelled estimates, its deaths derived from incidence. No national count of cancer deaths from vital registration was found. No population-based survival figure was found; the 2026 action plan gives a five-year breast cancer survival of about 74% without a source or cohort, so it is not used. The Circular 20/2022/TT-BYT list itself, with each cancer medicine's payment rate, was not read; the 60% rate for trastuzumab is quoted from a 2024 paper. The annex of Circular 01/2025/TT-BYT could not be downloaded (the provincial social security site reset the connection, and no archived copy existed), so which cancers are among the 62 diseases is reported only through SGGP's interviews. Breast screening counts by programme were not found.

The 12-month, 9-month and 6-month figures on this page are limits in Circular 32/2026/TT-BYT, which came into force on 1 October 2026, not measured times; OnCo found no Drug Administration report of median approval times by therapeutic area. Industry surveys of time to availability in Asia were not used as a source. The insurance list is reviewed at least every two years under Circular 37/2024/TT-BYT, but Dan Tri described the 2026 draft as the largest update in eight years, and no signed circular adding the 30 proposed cancer medicines had been found by 4 November 2026.