The National Hospital of Tropical Diseases (NHTD) is a tertiary-level teaching hospital with sites in the city centre (Giai Phong street – Bach Mai campus) and in Dong Anh district (Kim Chung), just outside the city centre on the way to the airport. NHTD hospitals receive infection-related referrals from most of northern Vietnam and have close ties to the Ministry of Health (MoH). During the COVID-19 pandemic, NHTD Kim Chung was the main treatment site for severe patients in the north of Vietnam.
The National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) is a major public health institute and also serves as the national agency for disease control and prevention in Vietnam under the Ministry of Health. NIHE was founded in 1926 and is a member of the International Pasteur Institutes Network.
All projects of OUCRU Ha Noi are administered through long-term agreements with these two hosting institutions and are directly approved by the Ministry of Health.
OUCRU Ha Noi was established during the years that a pandemic of a high mortality avian influenza virus (H5N1) was anticipated. A presence in the capital with proximity to national-level hospitals and institutes, policymakers and ministries, and other international organisations, including UN agencies, was deemed favourable for the programme.
The first director was Professor Sir Peter Horby (2007-2012), who went on to lead the ISARIC network and RECOVERY trial. He was succeeded by Professor Heiman Wertheim (2012-2015) and the current director Associate Professor Rogier van Doorn.
The research programme at OUCRU Ha Noi currently focuses mainly on antimicrobial resistance, including its clinical, laboratory, surveillance, community, and policy aspects. Other research focuses on the natural history of influenza through a longitudinal community cohort, national sero-surveillance for vaccine-preventable, neglected and emerging infections, and Talaromyces marneffei infections (see separate project entries).
OUCRU Ha Noi is based at the National Hospital of Tropical Diseases (NHTD) in Dong Da district in the centre of Ha Noi. We also have research offices and laboratory capacity at the NHTD in Dong Anh district, at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), and at the Ha Noi Medical University (HMU). With NIHE, we have been conducting influenza household transmission studies for over 15 years in Ha Nam province and with both NHTD and NIHE community- and hospital-based research on AMR in Nam Dinh province since 2021.
OUCRU Ha Noi is close to all the key national institutes in Vietnam (see partners/collaborators) and the Ministry of Health. These relations ensure that OUCRU research can be informed by or conducted in collaboration with policymakers and that findings can find their way into policies.
Our research in the area of antibiotic resistance supported the development of a formal National Situation Analysis (2009) and National Action Plan (2013) on Antimicrobial Resistance that was signed by the Minister of Health in 2013 and, with funds from the UK government (Newton Fund and Fleming Fund), OUCRU Ha Noi contributed to the establishment of the National AMR Surveillance Network and one of three National AMR Reference Laboratories (at NHTD Kim Chung), both recognised by the Ministry of Health (2016 and 2020, respectively).
Through NHTD, OUCRU Ha Noi has also been involved in consultations with MoH on national quality standards, antibiotic treatment guidelines, management of Talaromyces marneffei, avian influenza, Streptococcus suis, and other public health issues.
OUCRU Hanoi’s current research programme is almost entirely focused on antimicrobial resistance. It includes descriptive and laboratory studies on drug-resistant infections in hospitals and communities, community-based interventions to reduce use and resistance, including rapid diagnostics (C-Reactive Protein), implementing and researching antimicrobial stewardship at provincial-level hospitals and laboratory solutions at district-level hospitals.
OUCRU Hanoi shares a microbiology laboratory with the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, including whole genome sequencing capacity. Researchers at OUCRU Hanoi are also leading international initiatives like ACORN/ACORN-WGS and Just Transitions for AMR, and are part of multinational AMR studies as the AWaRe1 trial, ABACUS and the ADVANCE-ID network.
From 2009, the research programme has included driving the situation analysis and informing the National Action Plan for antimicrobial resistance (2013-2020), establishing a surveillance network of hospitals (VINARES) and a reference laboratory for antimicrobial resistance, both of which have been recognised by the Ministry of Health Vietnam and received national status under Fleming Fund grants.
OUCRU had a seat on the advisory panel to the Vietnamese Ministry of Health for the development and implementation of the National Strategy to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance 2023-2030 with a vision to 2050, which was signed off by the Prime Minister of Vietnam in 2023.
The reference laboratory received the ISO 15189 accreditation, and it was recognised as one of the 3 National Reference Laboratories for AMR in 2020.
The reference laboratory opened on the premises of the NHTD in Dong Anh district, Ha Noi.
We set up an independent network of clinics specialised in sexually transmitted diseases to establish surveillance of AMR in Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
The Vietnamese Ministry of Health officially recognised the national surveillance network for AMR.
OUCRU Ha Noi, together with NHTD and Oxford University/Public Health England and supported by WHO and the Ministry of Health, was awarded pilot funding from the Fleming Fund to develop a national surveillance network for AMR and a reference laboratory for AMR. We continued working with the VINARES network for this purpose.
A national programme (VINARES) to assess hospital-acquired infections, antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance in 16 hospitals across Vietnam was completed. This network was maintained for the collection of antibiotic resistance data as part of a Newton Fund grant to develop evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of infectious diseases. A Quality Standard was developed with the international branch of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE UK) and was reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Health, professional organisations and a committee with a broad national representation of clinicians, microbiologists, pharmacists and others. Data from VINARES informed the high-impact paper on the burden of AMR in 2019 (The Lancet, 2022).
OUCRU Ha Noi was one of the leading partners in a national working group for AMR with the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP). The resulting situation analysis of antibiotic use and resistance in Vietnam was one of the main sources of information used for the Nation Action Plan for AMR (Ministry of Health, 2013).