Headed by Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, the steering committee would create a plan for the campaign Vietnamese People Use Vietnamese Medicines, which aims to raise residents' awareness of domestic pharmaceutical companies and their products.

The committee would ask medical stations and doctors to prescribe domestic medicines and reduce the use of international medicines.

The committee would call for pharmaceutical enterprises to improve the quality of their products, to establish trademarks, and to hold fairs, exhibitions and trade promotion programmes to popularise their products.

In addition, the committee would provide support for the manufacture and delivery of domestic medicines through policies and regulations.

Last year the country spent US$1.4 billion on the importation of pharmaceutical products, up 19.3 per cent from 2010.

This year, the country has already imported an estimated $348 million worth of pharmaceutical products in the first quarter, an increase of 2.9 per cent compared with the same period last year.

The year-on-year increase caused prices of imported medicines to rise, which drained both residents' reserves and the medical insurance fund, said Nguyen Viet Hung, deputy director of the Drug Administration of Viet Nam.

With 180 plants nationwide, the country continues to import up to 90 per cent of all materials used for pharmaceutical production and more than half of the drugs for domestic use.

Although the prices of domestically-made drugs are 60-80 per cent cheaper than their imported competitors, they are not sold as widely, according to Hung.

"Consumer preferences for imported products have made Vietnamese pharmaceuticals less competitive at home," he said.

Doan Tra Linh, who lives in Thanh Xuan District, said she preferred to buy foreign medicine for her two-year-old son when he develops a sore throat or bronchitis.

"I seldom buy local drugs because my son recovers more quickly on imported medicines," she said.

Besides, doctors rarely prescribe locally-made drugs.

Tran Hong Hanh, a pharmacist in central Ha Noi, said only 30 per cent of the hundreds of drugs in her store are domestic.

"Almost all my customers ask for imported drugs, and they refuse to buy domestic drugs instead," she said.

Some customers bring doctors' prescriptions with them, and in most cases they call for imported drugs, Hanh added.

Nguyen Tuyet Mai, a doctor from the Ha Noi-based Bach Mai Hospital, said imported medicines often come with detailed descriptions and instructions so doctors could research them thoroughly before recommending them to patients. Local medicines were often not accompanied by documentation.

"I myself do not write prescriptions for local medicines since I do not really understand them," she said.

To encourage wide usage of local medicines, domestic pharmaceutical firms should invest more in popularising their trademarks and improving the quality of their products, Mai added.