The reduction in the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Vietnam during the last 5 years (2010-2015) has not been as high as expected, especially in rural areas. Further efforts are needed to continue to reduce the harms caused by tobacco smoking.

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ObjectivesTo understand, describe and analyse the experiences of women with breast cancer in Vietnam when accessing and using breast cancer services.DesignDescriptive qualitative study. Women were interviewed about their experiences from the first time they became aware of symptoms or changes to their body through treatment and post-treatment. This study is the first descriptive study on breast cancer in Vietnam from the perspective of women with a breast cancer diagnosis.ParticipantsWomen (n=13) who had completed or were still receiving treatment for breast cancer, purposively recruited from the north and south of Vietnam.ResultsAn analysis of the experiences of women with breast cancer in Vietnam revealed a lack of awareness and knowledge about breast cancer and symptoms. Family and social support were described as key factors influencing whether a woman accesses and uses breast cancer services. Cost of treatment and out-of-pocket expenditures limited access to services and resulted in significant financial challenges for women and their families.ConclusionsVietnam has made huge strides in improving cancer care, and is tackling a complex and expanding public health challenge, however, there are a number of areas requiring strengthening and future research. While Vietnam has successfully expanded social health insurance coverage, changes that increase the percentage of costs covered for specific treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, could benefit women and their families.

Clustering is a powerful tool for knowledge discovery in text collections. The quality of document clustering depends not only on clustering algorithms but also on document representation models. We develop a hierarchical document clustering algorithm based on a tolerance rough set model (TRSM) for representing documents, which offers a way of considering semantics relatedness between documents. The results of validation and evaluation of this method suggest that this clustering algorithm can be well adapted to text mining.

A costly modern-day double burden, the expenses of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are becoming a devastating epidemic. The World Health Organization estimates $7 trillion in economic losses from NCDs in 2011-2025. Although regarded as affluent diseases, the burden of NCDs is shifting into poorer groups. In this study, we assessed the socioeconomic inequalities in catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment associated with NCDs in Northern Vietnam. We also identified associated factors for catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment. Households self-reporting NCD diagnoses had the highest association with both catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment, followed by those in urban areas. Such households were likely poorer according to our calculations estimating socioeconomic inequalities. Households with at least 1 member older than 60 years were also more likely to suffer catastrophic health expenditures. These findings suggest that targeted policy to prevent or subsidize care for NCDs could prevent catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment among those already most disadvantaged.