AstraZeneca continues writing a successful story with Vietnam

State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (then Prime Minister) witnessed the announcement ceremony of AstraZeneca's investment into Vietnam in Sweden in May 2019.

In the last two years, AstraZeneca has become a familiar name to Vietnamese people through your efforts to provide vaccines and support Vietnam in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Could you please tell us about some of the highlights of the cooperation between AstraZeneca and Vietnam over the past three decades?

Firstly, I would like to congratulate the Government and People of Vietnam on the 15th anniversary of Vietnam's official accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), opening a new era in the journey of integration and globalization to Vietnam. In one and a half decades, we have witnessed many innovations and achievements, especially in the economic and healthcare industries that AstraZeneca has been honored to support since 1994.

Having operated in this beautiful country for 28 years now, we have seen many right strategies that have helped Vietnam achieve miraculous growth, such as joining ASEAN in 1995, attracting investors, enhancing trade through a series of free trade agreements with major countries and territories, most recently with the European Union and the United Kingdom.

When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, AstraZeneca became known more widely in Vietnam and was associated with vaccines. But in fact, colleagues in the global medical and scientific industries have joined us in researching and providing high-quality drugs, helping to protect and care for hundreds of millions of patients worldwide and in Vietnam for decades. Our biggest goal is to help develop a sustainable health system and reduce the dual burden of non-communicable and infectious diseases, including Covid-19.

AstraZeneca was established in 1999 through the merger of two large pharmaceutical companies, Astra (Sweden) and Zeneca (United Kingdom), creating a leading global biopharmaceutical company, now present in more than 100 countries with nearly 80,000 employees. In Vietnam, we are proud to dedicate our efforts to the health sector and local communities in almost three decades, and in 2020 became one of the first foreign-invested enterprises (FIE) in the pharmaceutical industry, with nearly 500 employees and committed to investing 7,000 billion VND (310 million USD) into Vietnam in the 2020-2030 period.

Mr. Nitin Kapoor, Chairman and General Director, AstraZeneca Vietnam and Asia Area Frontier Markets.

Among the aforementioned milestones, it is impossible not to mention the highly effective cooperation and support of AstraZeneca in Vietnam's Covid-19 prevention efforts over the past two years. Please tell us more about these contributions.

We are proud that AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine has played a key role in tackling the biggest public health challenge of our lifetime by delivering nearly 2.5 billion vaccine doses to more than 170 countries in 2021. In Vietnam, our landmark vaccine supply partnership with Vietnam Vaccine JSC (VNVC), with the support of the Government and the Ministry of Health, has delivered 30 million doses of the vaccine to Vietnam within just ten months.

AstraZeneca's vaccine is the first Covid-19 vaccine to be approved, promptly supplied and used in Vietnam's Covid-19 vaccination campaign. I hope that providing a large quantity of vaccines to Vietnam in a short period of time has demonstrated AstraZeneca's commitment to the country to stem the pandemic, protect people's health, and accelerate economic recovery.

In the next phase of cooperation with VNVC, we will provide to Vietnam another 25 million doses of our Covid-19 vaccine and 20,000 doses of the long-acting antibody Evusheld in 2022.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and CEO of AstraZeneca witnessed the investment announcement and signing ceremony between AstraZeneca and partners in the UK in November 2021.

On the margins of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh business trip to attend COP26 and visit the UK, AstraZeneca and Vietnamese partners reached two landmark agreements to contribute to the development of Vietnam's biopharmaceutical industry and support our country's Covid-19 pandemic prevention and control efforts. Could you share more about these plans?

In addition to signing the Phase 2 of the vaccine supply partnership with VNVC as I mentioned earlier, at this important meeting, in the presence of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, AstraZeneca also announced an investment of 2,000 billion VND (90 million USD) from 2022 to 2030 to conduct technology transfer and local contract manufacturing of our key medicines in Vietnam. This major project will help to strengthen the capabilities of domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing and sustainably develop Vietnam's health system. As a result, patients' access to medicines will be better ensured, helping to reduce non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as cancer, cardiovascular, renal and metabolic, respiratory, immunology and gastrointestinal diseases.

Under the Ministry of Health’s guidance, we will appoint a partner in Vietnam to transfer the necessary technology and knowledge to ensure that AstraZeneca's domestically produced NCD products will be of high quality, meeting the company’s global standards.

This investment complements AstraZeneca's ongoing 5,000 billion VND (220 million USD) investment into Vietnam for the 2020-2024 period, to advance pharmaceutical R&D, clinical trials and talent development. This was announced during President Nguyen Xuan Phuc's visit to AstraZeneca’s manufacturing site in Sweden in 2019.

In total, we will invest 7,000 billion VND in Vietnam over these ten years to support Vietnam's health system and economy to develop comprehensively and sustainably. As a long-term partner of the Government and health sector, we will always do our best for the benefits of the Vietnamese people.

Thank you very much.

AstraZeneca's headquarters and new research center in Cambridge, UK.