1. Brief Overview and Current Situation
2. History of Establishment and Organizational Structure
The Center for Training and Research in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine, which is part of the Vietnam Military Medical University (formerly known as the Department of Chemical Defense, which was subsequently renamed as the Department of Chemical Defense – Nuclear, the Department of Radiological and Nuclear Medicine, and the Center for Training and Research in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine) was established on January 13, 1959.
As of now, the center has a total of 12 staff members, including military officers and professional servicemen, with the following breakdown: Military officers: 7, professional servicemen: 5.
Educational qualifications: Doctorate degree: 3, Master’s degree: 3, Bachelor’s degree: 1, Vocational degree: 5.
The center is organized within the Party as a grassroots cell, directly under the Party Committee of the University, with 12 Party members.
The center is led by Colonel Dr. Hoang Anh Tuan, the Party Secretary, and the Director of the Center.
2. Functions and Duties
The Center for Training and Research in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine is tasked with teaching and conducting scientific research on medical measures in the prevention of chemical and nuclear weapons during wartime. It also focuses on mitigating the effects of harmful chemical and radiation agents on the health of the military and civilian populations during peacetime. The center provides education for university-level students, including military medical doctors, military pharmacists, civilian pharmacists, biomedical engineering graduates, and postgraduate education (medical specialists, specialized medical practitioners, Master’s and PhD candidates in various fields). Additionally, it contributes to the training of military personnel (undergraduate and postgraduate) for the countries of Laos and Cambodia. The center proposes and undertakes scientific research tasks at the grassroots level, ministry level, and state level, as well as projects at the ministry and state levels. It participates in international collaborations related to education and scientific research, aiming to develop a strong and comprehensive institution.
3. Mission, Vision, and Core Values
– Mission: To research and apply modern knowledge and technology in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine to serve the protection of the health of military personnel and civilians in conditions of nuclear weapons use in war, nuclear accidents, and incidents..
– Vision: To become a leading center in the military for in-depth training and research in the field of Radiological and Nuclear Medicine.
– Core Values: Positive attitude, discipline, dedication, and professional expertise.
1. Achievements
Between 2014 and 2020, the Center for Training and Research in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine excellently accomplished its mission in training, scientific research, and establishing a robust and comprehensive institution. Specifically:
1. It excelled in its training and education mission, establishing itself as a reliable institution with a strong teaching tradition. It became a trusted address for higher education and postgraduate training.
Over the past five years, the Center has achieved outstanding results in training, with over 10,000 training hours provided to various target groups, teaching thousands of students and trainees. On average, each year, there were around 2,000 standard teaching hours, and each instructor taught between 300 to 400 hours annually. The Center also supervised 10 research students and 4 postgraduate students, actively improving the content and teaching methods, applying active learning methods, placing students at the center of the learning process, and continuously enhancing the quality of education. It adopted a diverse approach to knowledge assessment, including oral exams, essay writing, and objective multiple-choice exams, ensuring a rigorous and accurate evaluation of student learning outcomes, contributing to the improvement of the Center’s and the VMMU’s training quality. As a result, it enhanced the Center’s reputation and the school’s training brand. The Center developed over 1,500 objective multiple-choice questions, ensuring a sufficient number of questions to assess the students’ proficiency. It established a credit-based training program for university and postgraduate students, which worked well for postgraduate students, promoting active participation in learning.
Every year, the Center guided student research groups in scientific research activities, and they received awards at student scientific research conferences. Over the past five years, the Center guided 5 student research groups, involving 20 highly capable students, to carry out research projects. All these projects were presented at student scientific research conferences and youth innovation conferences and received numerous awards.
In 2019, two research students successfully defended their doctoral theses at the Center, specializing in Toxicology, increasing the total number of research students who have successfully defended their theses at the Center to 22. Currently, the Center is supervising 3 research students, with 2 research students having already defended their theses at the base level.
Continuously, from 2018 to 2023, the Center sent lecturers to accompany students from courses DH44 to DH51 for field training at the training center, strictly following the School’s training plan, demonstrating agility, compliance with regulations, and effective completion of tasks.
All the instructors at the Center have consistently completed their assigned tasks with excellence, without tardiness or absenteeism, and they are always ready to receive and successfully fulfill any task. Every year, the Center sends its instructors to participate in outdoor training (currently the final stage of training) at the Hòa Sơn outdoor training center, ensuring absolute safety in all aspects and achieving high quality. The Center’s faculty members are constantly exploring, innovating, and coming up with numerous ideas to enhance hygiene handling techniques, thereby contributing to the improvement of the quality of the final training exercises and the successful completion of assigned tasks.
In 2022, the Center received a multi-purpose decontamination vehicle for training and field exercises. In a very short time and with the support of the Chemical Department, the Center’s staff quickly received and effectively operated the equipment during Exercise CK51. Immediately after Exercise CK51, responding to a request from the Medical Department, the Center mobilized its personnel and equipment (SKID NBCR multi-purpose decontamination vehicle and an entire decontamination kit) to participate in Exercise MT22 in Đà Nẵng, achieving excellent results.
The Center has been focusing on learning and improving the quality of training, linking training and scientific research with departments and scientific bases both within and outside the University. It has also been participating in teaching and training for universities both within and outside the military. Additionally, the Center has been involved in advisory work and the handling of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear contamination for medical facilities within and outside the military, including emergency response and treatment for poisonings, snakebites, at Vĩnh Phúc Provincial General Hospital, chemical contamination protection for plant protection officers at the 316th Division of Military Region II, disposal of stored toxic chemicals at Z113 Factory, training in emergency response and treatment for mushroom and plant poisonings in the medical sector in Hà Giang, Cao Bằng, Bắc Kạn, Vĩnh Phúc, Sơn La provinces. It has also implemented a field hospital during the defense of Hòa Bình province in 2016.
Since 2017, the Center has collaborated with international experts from the World Toxicology Association and the Singapore Toxicology Association to organize training courses and issue continuous medical training certificates with updated content on emergency response to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents for 40 specialist officers in critical care and poison control in the Hà Nội area (in 2017), and the first response to casualties from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear agents for 150 specialist officers in emergency response, poison control, radiation medicine, and preventive medicine nationwide (in 2018).
The Center for Training and Research in Radiological and Nuclear Medicine is indeed a reliable institution for higher education and postgraduate education in the field of Toxicology and Radiological Medicine nationwide. It consistently takes care of training and developing the faculty. The Center continuously grows its faculty. In the past five years, it has developed 3 master’s degree holders, 3 main lecturers, and 7 lecturers who have achieved the title of Excellent Lecturer at the University level, and 2 lecturers recognized as Excellent Lecturers by the Ministry of National Defense.

2. Excellent completion of scientific research tasks, worthy of being a leading unit of VMMU scientific movement in the field of scientific research.
From 2014 to 2018, the Center has implemented and officially accepted one sub-project of the State-level project: “Studying the effects of climate change on human communicable diseases and testing some intervention solutions in the coastal areas of the Northern and Southern Delta” code BĐKH.28/11-15; implemented one national project (Nafosted): “Researching chemical composition and some biological activities of Buddleja, Buddlejaceae in Vietnam”, code 104.01-2012.24; officially in charge of 3 provincial projects: “A study on active elements that are capable of protecting and enhancing liver function from some medicinal herbs in Thai Binh province and proposing sustainable development solutions”, “A study on the situation of HPV infection in women at the age of parturition in Vinh Phuc province in 2016” and “A study on medical preparation of dietary supplement from Pangasius Collagen and medicinal herbs to prevent and support the treatment of arthritis disease”Code: 20/2014/DT-KHCN of Dong Thap Province “Researching biological characteristics, acute toxicity and proposing solutions for prevention, emergency and treatment in case of eating some common species of poisonous plants and poisonous mushrooms in Vinh Phuc province” Code 47/ĐTKHVP-2017. The results of official acceptances of the researches were either good or excellent. The center implemented 01 initiative that got the excellent prize at the General-Staff level of the Vietnam People’s Army “A study on building a software to support the implementation of sanitation for the Regimental Military Station”, 01 technique won the third prize in the Youth Technical Festival of VMMU 2016 “The system causes poisoning and assesses the level of poisoning of gas toxicity via the experiments”, 01 technique won the second prize in the Health Technical Festival in Hanoi in 2016 and 01 technique won the third prize in the 17th creative youth award in the army in 2017.
– The center has presided over and completed on time and ensured the quality of provincial scientific research researches. All researches implemented by the center in recent years have been excellently accepted, awarded and successfully and effectively applied. Especially during the process of the research on poisonous mushrooms and plants in HaGiang, CaoBang, BacKan, and VinhPhuc, the center helped the provinces organize many training courses for the local medical staffs about the ill effects of poisonous mushrooms and plants, preventive solutions, treatments when eating poisonous mushrooms and plants. As well, the center arranged some propaganda films broadcasted on the local radio and television of HaGiang, CaoBang, BacKan, and VinhPhuc about the ill effects, how to recognize poisonous mushrooms and plants, some first aids to treat people who get poisoned.
– The center sent many technical staff (Associate Professor, PhD) to participate in training courses organized by the Ministry of Health on food safety and hygiene (harmful effects and ways to prevent poisonous plants and mushrooms), harm and ways to reduce mercury emissions in health instutions…
– The center advised the Food Safety and Hygiene Department of the Ministry of Health, the provinces of Lao Cai, Lang Son, Son La, Ha Giang, Vinh Phuc … on prevention from being poisoned from poisonous plants and mushrooms as well as the toxicity of mouldy corn cake. The center has conducted a test to identify a number of toxicants for many civil and military medical institutions, and at the same time built and completed the database of toxicants posted on the internet for prevention and consultation of poisoning. The center built and completed a number of testing techniques on a number of invested equipment, especially testing techniques and analysis of toxicants on biological and environmental specimen to help the training, scientific research in order to get high effective treatment. The implementation of a series of researches on poisonous plants and mushrooms, and mouldy fungus in corn cake has helped to provide real data about the cause of poisoning and effective preventive solutions. The implementation of these researches are the bright spots marking an effective combination between military and civil medicine in solving urgent medical and socio-economic issues in remote areas in the north of the country. The results of the researches held by the center have helped to sharply reduce the cases, the number of sufferers and death cases due to poisoning from poisonous plants and mushrooms and mouldy corn cake in the above mentioned locations. These results were highly evaluated by Ministry of Health and the provincial People’s Committees.
– Regularly focusing on well managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment in a safe, economical and durable way; annually strengthening, checking, reporting experiences according to the guidance of the superior agencies.
Through the implementation of scientific researches, the cadres of the center are more and more matured and the center currently being one of the units in VMMU has publications in international scientific journals. In the past 5 years, the center has had one or two works published in international scientific journals
From 2018 to 2023 the center of training, researching toxicology and radioactivity has had 8 international articles and over 60 domestic scientific articles. It makes a big contribution to training professional cadres, enhancing the quality of education and higher education as well as developing professional techniques. The center always facilitates young doctors to participate and preside over scientific researches and they got some achievements such as: 01 technique won the 3rd prize in VMMU Youth Technical Festival 2016, 01 technique won the second prize in the Health Technical Festival in Hanoi in 2016 and 01 technique won the third prize in the 17th creative youth award in the army in 2017.
Currently the center is presiding over one sub-project at the state level KC.AT “Researching solutions to protect the soldier health under war conditions using nuclear weapons, in nuclear incidents accidents”; one scientific research at General Staff level: “Researching solutions to improve the quality of teaching military poison practice at VMMU”. The currently implementing scientific projects are important premise in solving the traning issues about practice in laboratory, using Medical simulation technology and deploying field training for Toxicology and Radioactivity in the next stage in order to meet the demand of development of VMMU – the national key school applies new technology and develops new products to directly serve military medicine training.

III. Types of awards
Year Types of awards Number, date of reward decision, issuing agency
2013 Certificate of Merit – Ministry of Defence Decision No 2270/QĐ-BQP, issued on 26/6/2013 by Minister of Defence
2014 Certificate of Merit – VMMU Decision No 555/QĐ-HVQY issued on 07/03/2014 by VMMU political commissar
2015 Certificate of Merit – People’s Committee in Hoa Binh Province Decision No 3180/QĐ-BCĐ, issued on 18/11/2015 by HoaBinh provincial Committee of manoeuvre.
2016 Certificate of Credit – Army Medical Department – Ministry of Defence Decision No 976/QĐ-BCĐ issued on 30/5/2016 by Head of Army Medical Department
2016 Certificate of Merit – People’s Committee in HaGiang Province Decision No 644/KT, issued on 12/04/2016 by the chairman of Hagiang provincial People’s Committee Nguyễn Văn Sơn
2017 Certificate of Merit – Ministry of Health
Certificate of Merit – Ministry of Defence Decision No 919/BYT issued on 18/1/2017 by Minister of Health
Decision No 1650/QĐ-BQP issued on 10/5/2017 by Minister of Defence
2018 Certificate of Merit – Prime Minister Decision No 1452/QĐ-TTg issued on 31/10/2018 by Prime Minister

1. List of lecturers:
No. Full Name Position Academic Ranks and Degrees Notes
1 Hoang Anh Tuan Center Director Doctorate
2 Tran Van Tung Lecturer Master
3 Truong Thi Thu Hien Lecturer Master
4 Nguyen Thanh Binh Lecturer Master
5 Hoang Dac Thang Lecturer Master
6 Ha Van Quang Lecturer Master
7 Le Quoc Toan Teaching Assistant Doctor

Contact
– Address: Toxicology and Radiation Center of Traing and Research , Medical Military Academy; 160 Phung Hung street, Phuc La ward, Ha Dong district, Ha Noi city
– Phone number: 069566312