Born into a family with generations of physicians, Prof. (Dr.) MD Le Ngoc Thanh determined to pursue the medical profession, but also became a teacher naturally.

Working in the medical profession, doctors with expertise often get involved in teaching to train the next generation. Prof. Thanh is no exception. During 27 years working at Viet Duc Hospital as a surgeon, he also taught students at Hanoi Medical University. And thus, he has been in the teaching profession ever since.

“I have been in the teaching profession since 1986. As time goes by, the teaching has become my responsibility for the profession and for the next generations of mine. However, I think that one does not have to be in the classroom to be a teacher”, said Prof. Thanh

Having been the dean of VNU School of Medicine and Pharmacy for a number of years, Prof. Thanh realized the need of further developing the environment for training medical human resources, which has given impetus to the upgrading of the School into a university under VNU.

As dean of the School and now rector of the University, Prof. Thanh hopes to put more of the basic scientific researches of VNU into practice to prevent some of them from being shelved or transferred to foreign countries.

Prof. Le Ngoc Thanh expects doctors and pharmacists - graduates from VNU University of Medicine and Pharmacy, to have the same research ability as other scientific researchers of VNU. "I want to have a training environment in the medical industry where medical and pharmaceutical students can integrate both domestically and internationally; to do so, they need good foreign language skills", he stressed.

Established with the enthusiasm of many people like Prof. Le Ngoc Thanh, the University of Medicine and Pharmacy is the eighth university under VNU.