Close-up of the last PET/CT imaging drug manufacturing facility in Ho Chi Minh City that had to stop operating

PET/CT - Ảnh 1. — Engineer checks the plant's radioactive waste gas treatment system

The large-scale radioactive isotope drug production reactor under the public-private partnership model of Rang Dong Medical Joint Stock Company was once located in the campus of the Center for Research and Development of Radiation Technology (Vinagamma), belonging to the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute (202A Street 11, Linh Xuan Ward, Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City).

The radioactive drug production facility invested 200 billion VND, can supply enough drugs for 10 PET-CT systems. In 2019, this company started trial operation of the 18F-FDG drug production facility in Ho Chi Minh City and is the first private facility in the Southern region to be granted a certificate of "Good Manufacturing Practices for Drugs and Pharmaceutical Ingredients" (GMP) by the Drug Administration of Vietnam ( Ministry of Health ) for the production line of radioactive injection drugs containing 18F-FDG used for PET/CT imaging in cancer diagnosis and monitoring and treatment support.

With an area of over ^300m2 and equipped with modern machinery and equipment such as Cyclotron accelerator, 18F-FDG synthesis system, quality control machinery system, the factory is operated by a team of skilled engineers.

However, in 2022, the inspection team of the Ministry of Science and Technology concluded that the company's operations were not in accordance with the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets. This conclusion caused the entire production process to be suspended "indefinitely".

Although over the next two years, the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health and Rang Dong Company repeatedly requested to remove the obstacles, all efforts fell into silence. The Ministry of Science and Technology did not provide any clear solution.

By the end of 2024, Rang Dong will be forced to relocate all equipment, hand over the factory, and officially close the door to producing the second source of radioactive medicine in the South. And currently, the whole country has only two licensed 18F-FDG production facilities, both located in Hanoi.

This means that the South is completely "empty-handed" in terms of supply of radioactive isotope 18F-FDG and in the end, patients continue to suffer.

Businesses lost billions of dong

Speaking with Tuoi Tre , the leader of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute said that up to now, the scientific and technical cooperation contract between the unit and Rang Dong Medical Joint Stock Company has been officially "liquidated" and the company has also moved the production furnace out of the institute's campus.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Son, director of Rang Dong Medical Joint Stock Company, said that by 2022, the Ministry of Science and Technology requested to stop operations due to the use of public assets. During the two years of stopping production of radioactive drugs, the company still had to operate daily to prevent machinery from breaking down, and each month the maintenance cost was about 320 million VND.

Due to the heavy maintenance costs, by the end of 2024 the company could not wait for the problem to be resolved and had to leave with a loss of billions of dong.

Tuoi Tre reporters were once allowed by Rang Dong Medical Joint Stock Company to enter the 18F-FDG radioactive isotope production furnace to take a series of photos and send them to readers: