Phuc Pham-Duc

Hanoi School Of Public Health · Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research

Traditional pork value chains dominate the production and distribution of pork in Vietnam; however, the high level of microbiological contamination in pork may increase the risk of food-borne disease for consumers. There is limited evidence about how to feasibly and scalably reduce microbial contamination in pork sold in traditional markets. This s...

Traditional pork shops play an essential role in delivering pork, the most popular food in Vietnam, to consumers. Studies have shown the need for investment in training and equipment to improve the safety of pork sold at traditional shops. However, it remains unclear how consumers perceived improvement to the hygiene in pork shops and if they are r...

In Vietnam, helminthioses remain a major threat to public health and contribute to the maintenance of poverty in highly endemic regions. Through increased awareness of the damaging effects caused by helminthioses, the Vietnamese government has implemented many national programs over the past 30 years for the prevention and control of the most impor...

Trichinellosis and cysticercosis remain challenges to human health and animal productivity worldwide, especially in developing countries. While information on the occurrence of both diseases is infrequent, they are endemic in parts of Vietnam and mainly related to indigenous pigs kept by ethnic minorities. This study aimed to determine the seroprev...

Pork and pork products are important staple food in the diet of Vietnamese consumers. The safety of pork, including biological contamination, is a concern to several public authorities and value chain actors. This cross-sectional study aimed to identify Salmonella and total bacteria count (TBC) contamination of cut pork sold in different outlets, a...

Background Contact with livestock wastewater on farms and in communities can pose a risk to human and animal health. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted in 180 households and 24 pig farms (96 wastewater samples) to explore information about pig production, livestock waste management, antibiotic use, and to analyze antibiotic residues...

The use of antibiotics in livestock production is considered a major driver of antibiotic resistance on a global scale. In Vietnam, small- and medium-scale livestock producers dominate the domestic market and regulatory pushes have done little to decrease antibiotic use. In order to inform future policy directions, this study aims to explore knowle...

Free open access until 16 August 2019 here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1ZI9rB8cckQbG [copy and paste in your browser] Aquaculture systems are highly complex, dynamic and interconnected systems influenced by environmental, biological, cultural, socio-economic and human behavioural factors. Intensification of aquaculture production is likely to d...

Pork is the most common and widely consumed meat product in Vietnam. The study aimed to assess nutrition and food safety risks and opportunities associated with pork value chains in Vietnam. Twenty-nine focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted in Hung Yen and Nghe An provinces with 164 participants who were both regular pork consumers and mothe...

Background Diabetes mellitus (DM) is recognized as an important comorbidity for the development of tuberculosis (TB). With the increase of DM burden globally, concerns have been raised about the emerging co-epidemics of DM and TB, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Methods A facility-based, cross-sectional study was carried out in all...

Pork is the most commonly consumed meat in Vietnam, and Salmonella enterica is a common contaminant. This study aimed to assess potential S. enterica cross-contamination between raw and cooked pork in Vietnamese households. Different scenarios for cross-contamination were constructed based on a household survey of pork handling practices (416 house...

The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of, and risk factors for, Salmonella contamination along the smallholder pig value chain in northern Vietnam. Repeat cross-sectional (for farm and pork shops) and longitudinal (for slaughterhouses) studies were carried out in Hung Yen and Nghe An provinces in four sampling periods over a...

This paper evaluated the implementation of an initiative for promoting risk-based approaches to improve food safety management in Vietnam. A Taskforce of Risk Assessment for Food Safety (Taskforce) was formed and consisted of researchers working on risk assessment and food safety, and representatives of the related ministries of Health and of Agric...

Context: The use of biogas systems to treat livestock waste is a common practice in Vietnam. However, farmers' knowledge and practices of the safe and appropriate use of household biogas units (HBUs) are still limited and could negatively impact human, animal, and environmental health. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of an intervention to...

Background: The Sustainable Development Goals include commitments to end poverty, and promote education for all, gender equality, the availability of water and decent work for all. An important constraint is the fact that each day, many millions of women and children, and much less frequently men, carry their household's water home from off-plot s...

Human excreta is a low cost source of nutrients vital to plant growth, but also a source of pathogens transmissible to people and animals. We investigated the cost-savings and infection risk of soil transmitted helminths (STHs) in four scenarios where farmers used either inorganic fertilizer or fresh/composted human excreta supplemented by inorgani...

Food-borne diseases and food poisonings are attracting a lot of attention in Vietnam due to repeated episodes of adulterated and unsafe food practices, which have been receiving widespread media attention. Various food scares have happened including cyanides and phenol residues in seafood in central coast of Vietnam since an environmental disaster...

In Vietnam, pigs and poultry are predominantly produced by small-scale farmers, creating challenges for zoonotic disease management. The objective of this study was to characterize practices related to livestock and manure management and to measure association with 3 self-reported health symptoms (coughing, fever, and diarrhea/nausea/vomiting) in a...

Background Bacillary dysentery (BD) is an acute bacterial infection of the intestine caused by Shigella spp., with clinical symptoms ranging from fever to bloody diarrhoea to abdominal cramps to tenesmus. In Vietnam, enteric bacterial pathogens are an important cause of diarrhoea and most cases in children under 5 years of age are due to Shigella s...

Background In Vietnam, dengue fever (DF) is still a leading cause of hospitalization. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the seasonality and association with climate factors (temperature and precipitation) on the incidences of DF in four provinces where the highest incidence rates were observed from 1994 to 2013 in Vietnam. Methods In...

: Despite recent improvements of wastewater treatment capacities in urban areas of Hanoi, Vietnam, microbial pollution is still considerable. There is a paucity of burden estimates due to gastrointestinal infection in people living along the wastewater system, and among people who are in direct contact with the wastewater, such as farmers using was...

Objectives: We studied the influence of different additive materials (lime, and rice husk) and aeration conditions on Ascaris lumbricoides egg die-off in 24 vaults of an experimental excreta storage unit. Methods: Excreta samples were collected once every two weeks over a 181-day period. Temperature, pH, and moisture content were recorded. A. lu...

Objectives: The aim of this paper was to assess the diarrhea risks caused by various pathogens among those exposed to biogas wastewater through different activities. Methods: Application of quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) of biogas wastewater was conducted in Hanam Province, Vietnam. A total of 451 representatives from households t...

Objectives: To quantify salmonellosis risk in humans through consumption of boiled pork in urban Hung Yen Province, Vietnam, using a quantitative microbial risk assessment. Methods: We collected 302 samples along the pork value chain in Hung Yen between April 2014 and February 2015. We developed a model in @Risk, based on microbiological, market...

Objective: This study assesses the risk of exposure to hazardous chemical residues in pork meat, liver and kidney collected at wet markets in Nghe An and Hung Yen provinces and discuss health impact implication. Method: 514 pig feed, kidney, liver and pork samples were pooled and qualitatively and quantitatively analysed for tetracyclines, fluoroq...

Material flow analysis (MFA) has been applied to assess the environmental impact of human activities on nutrient flows at the commune scale. This paper reports the assessment of human excreta and animal manure as a nutrient source for paddy fields and fishponds in Hoang Tay commune, Ha Nam province, Vietnam. The quality of MFA model was confirmed t...

In Vietnam, Japanese encephalitis virus accounts for 12-71% of viral encephalitis (VE) cases followed by enteroviruses and dengue virus among identified pathogens. This study is the first attempt to evaluate the seasonality of VE and associated environmental risk factors in two provinces from 2004 to 2013 using a seasonal trend-decomposition proced...

Background Infections with intestinal parasites (helminths and intestinal protozoa) are endemic in Southeast Asia and inappropriate management and reuse of wastewater might exacerbate the risk of human infections. In rapidly growing urban settings, little is known about the extent of intestinal parasite infections. We assessed the point-prevalence...

Pork safety is an important public health concern in Vietnam and is a shared responsibility among many actors along the pork value chain. We examined the knowledge, perceptions, and practices regarding food safety, disease, and health risk among selected pork value chain actors (slaughterhouse owners and workers, people living around slaughterhouse...

Objectives In resource-constrained settings, the recovery of nutrients and the production of energy from liquid and solid waste are important. We determined the range and magnitude of potential community health impacts of six solid and liquid waste recovery and reuse business models in Hanoi, Vietnam. Methods We employed a health impact assessment...

Cryptosporidium and Giardia are protozoan parasites that cause human diarrheal disease worldwide. This study was done to evaluate the prevalence and concentrations of these protozoa in environmental samples in Hanam, Vietnam and to assess potential contamination sources using molecular epidemiological tools. A total of 134 environmental samples wer...

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection varies among ethnic or racial groups. This study aimed to evaluate the seroprevalence and factors associated with H. pylori infection among Thai and Kinh children living in the same natural and social conditions in northwestern mountainous region in NorthWest of Vietnam (Dien Bien province). In this cross-s...

Streptococcus suis is a leading cause of bacterial meningitis in Vietnamese adults, and the major risk factors have been identified as consumption of raw pig blood (Tiet canh), and occupational exposure to pigs. Previous studies of S. suis prevalence in pigs sampled from southern Vietnam have indicated very high levels of commensal infection in ton...

The second edition of this book contains 32 chapters divided into 4 main sections that discuss the theoretical foundations of One Health; methods, skills and perspectives for the practice of One Health; the application of One Health in infectious and non-infectious diseases and governance and capacity building, all of which are related to the globa...

The One Health concept of combined veterinary and human health continues to gain momentum, but the supporting literature is sparse. In this book, the origins of the concept are examined, and practical content on methodological tools, data gathering, monitoring techniques, study designs, and mathematical models is included. Zoonotic diseases, with d...

Background: To date, research has shown an increasing use of the term "ecohealth" in literature, but few researchers have explicitly described how it has been used. We investigated a project on health and environmental sanitation (the conceptual framework of which included the pillars of ecohealth) to identify the impediments and enablers of ecohe...

Background Despite the potential health risks of wastewater and excreta use as fertiliser in agriculture, it is still widespread in Vietnam. However, the importance of diarrheal risk in adults’ associated with the combined exposures to both excreta and wastewater use in agriculture is largely unknown. This study was carried out to determine diarrho...

Background Like many countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam's rapid population and economic growth has met challenges in infrastructure development, especially sanitation in rural areas. Objective As an entry point, we developed scenario planning as an action–research tool in a peri-urban community to identify first steps towards improving their com...

Material flow analysis (MFA) is a useful methodology to describe and quantify complex systems based on the law of mass conservation. It was further adapted to suit the specific conditions in developing countries where the available data is scarce and uncertain. The 'adapted MFA' methodology optimises the number of parameters, describes these parame...

Entamoeba histolytica is an important protozoan intestinal infection in resource-poor settings, including Vietnam. The study objective was to assess risk factors of E. histolytica infection in a community in Vietnam, where wastewater and human excreta are used in agriculture. A case-control study was conducted among residents of Hanam province, Nor...

Nutrient recycling from human waste for production of animal feed provides an alternative to the use of chemical fertilisers and commercial animal feed. It also contributes to minimising water and soil pollution.

In North and Central Vietnam it is common among farmers to use excreta from the family double vault composting latrine (DVC) as fertilizer in the fields. The official Vietnamese health guidelines stipulate a six-month period of composting before applying excreta to two of their three annual crops. However, farmers in this region cannot afford to fo...

For centuries farmers in Vietnam have fertilized their fields with human excreta collected directly from their household latrines. Contrary to the official guideline of six-month storage, the households usually only store human excreta for three to four months before use, since this is the length of time that farmers have available to produce ferti...

Overall, the DVC latrine programme was well received by participating households. Performance of these DVC latrines could be significantly improved through several low-cost technical modifications that would improve composting, and reduce odours and flies. A key challenge to scaling up this program will be changing the public’s perception that DVC...

The use of human excreta as fertiliser in agriculture is a common practice in parts of South East Asia benefiting production but at the same time a risk factor for increased helminth infections. This paper describes the hygienic handling of human excreta for use in agriculture in Central Vietnam from a practical farming perspective presenting the f...

Vietnamese farmers' health-risk awareness, knowledge, and practices related to their use of wastewater and human excreta was investigated in an anthropological study by a multidisciplinary team in peri-urban Hanoi and Nghe An Province. Farmers identified health risks associated with their use of excreta and wastewater, but they viewed these as unav...

The ancient practice of applying latrine wastes to agricultural land has maintained soil fertility in Vietnam for several centuries but may be associated with health risks if the wastes are inadequately treated before usage. This study aimed at investigating the perceptions and handling practices using latrine wastes as fertilizers in a community i...

To achieve the aims of the Millennium Development Goals, significant investments will be required to increase sanitation coverage and improve the management of human excreta. The United Nations Millennium Task Force on Water and Sanita-tion put forward 10 crucial actions that would be needed, and among these is a pledge for governments to support sa...