Marking Lao Health Day

On the occasion of Lao Health Day on 18 June 2026, the LuxDev Asia Office and the Health and nutrition programme team pay tribute to the contributions of the country’s healthcare workforce, including nurses, midwives, doctors and health managers, who deliver life-saving care every day across the provinces.

Luxembourg’s support for the Lao health workforce dates back more than 20 years, and human resource development in health remains the backbone of the ongoing programme under the 5th Indicative Cooperation Programme (ICP). Since 2015, a total of 1,115 scholarships, both short- and long-term, have been awarded to health workers from Bolikhamxay, Khammouane, Bokeo and Vientiane Province. Looking ahead, ICP V plans to oversee approximately 609 scholarships, continuing the programme’s commitment to building a skilled, gender-equitable and ethnically diverse health workforce across the four target provinces of the Lao PDR.

Beyond scholarships that serve to improve the quality of healthcare in line with international standards, the Health and nutrition programme is supporting provincial hospitals to establish and strengthen medical training units as platforms for workplace-based learning and continuous professional development. This support includes improving training management systems, developing operational procedures, and enhancing the capacity of health facilities to provide high-quality in-service training for healthcare workers. These units will serve as permanent centres for in-service training, skills refresher workshops, and peer-to-peer learning, ensuring that professional development is not a one-off event but an ongoing part of working life for health staff. Furthermore, embedded doctors, nursing and midwifery advisers from the Health and nutrition programme work directly within health facilities, providing bedside mentoring, coaching and supervision as a more durable alternative to centralised training.

On Lao Health Day, we recognise that working conditions, equipment and environment matter. Yet this day serves as a special reminder that it is the skill, commitment and compassion of the health workforce that ultimately determine whether a mother delivers safely, whether a child is vaccinated, and whether no one is left behind.

The LuxDev Asia Office and the Health and nutrition programme team wish everyone a happy Lao Health Day. 

The Health and nutrition programme is financed by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and implemented by the Lao Ministry of Health and LuxDev, the Luxembourg Development Cooperation Agency.