Ahead of the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday, Vietnamese people often buy healthcare products as gifts to strengthen family bonding, market surveys show.

Việt Nam registered one of the world’s fastest economic growth rates in 2024, expanding at over 7 per cent.

While January 29, 2025 marks the first day of the Lunar New Year, known as Tết Nguyên Đán (or the festival at the start of the year), the entire Tết holiday lasts about 10 days.

“As Tết 2025 nears, apart from preserving cultural traditions, consumers look for products that can protect health, while conveying the meaning of reunion and showing care about the quality of life,” Kantar, a consulting firm, stated in a Việt Nam market report released last November.

Tết is a time for Vietnamese people to honour the past and embrace the future. It represents a perfect chance to boost health and family bonding in traditions passed on to the next generation by parents, who remain a source of hope and spiritual support for children to get through challenges. 

Developed by Abbott, a global healthcare leader, Ensure Gold is a science-based solution comprising powder and ready-to-drink options that offer complete and balanced nutrition to improve health and help elderly people live healthier, fuller lives.

“Since my parents started taking Ensure Gold regularly on a daily basis, I can see that my mother’s health has been recovering faster since the last time she fell sick,” said Hương, a cosmetics seller in the central province of Quảng Ngãi.

“My father’s limbs also became stronger, so he can handle many things,” she added, assessing the product in a consumer interview conducted for the Ensure Gold manufacturer.

One of Abbott’s innovations, Ensure Gold has taken up a meaningful role in upholding family values by empowering adult children to protect their parents' health and foster family bonding even beyond Tết.

A healthy ageing community

Amid robust economic growth, Việt Nam stands among the world’s most rapidly ageing countries.

The UNFPA said people aged 60 and older made up around 12 per cent of Việt Nam’s population in 2019, a ratio that will rise to more than 25 per cent by 2050. By 2036, Việt Nam will transition from an 'ageing' to an 'aged' society.

In order to foster a healthy ageing community in Việt Nam, Abbott continually innovates its products. This includes Ensure Gold’s improved dual-action formula, aimed at supporting adults' strength and immunity.

While tirelessly seeking ways to support children, parents often put their own health aside. On the other side, adult children may not notice that their ageing parents are ignoring signs of declining health, such as slower walking speed, weight loss, body pains and weakened immunity.

Ageing is a natural process that can come with declines in muscle and immune health. Most immune cell levels drop with age, so the elderly are at higher risk of infection.

Adults can also lose up to 40 per cent of muscle mass between the ages of 40 and 80. Muscle loss can affect strength, immunity and the ability to recover from illness. Nutritional deficiencies can further exacerbate age-related health declines, so adults should focus on proper nutrition and exercise.

As the essential ‘gift of health’, Ensure Gold offers complete and balanced nutrition. It contains both beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate (HMB) to support muscles after just eight weeks of use, and yeast beta-glucan (YBG) to enhance immune health in four weeks, helping adults stay strong and active as they age.

Ensure Gold also contains other important nutrients, including fructooligosaccharides (FOS) for better digestion, calcium and vitamin D for strong bones, and a plant-based fat blend with omega-3 to support heart health.

The solution is one of many products developed by Abbott, a diversified healthcare company. Its portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in nutrition, medicines, diagnostics and medical devices.

Innovations for a healthy future

After arriving in Việt Nam in 1995, Abbott has continuously offered innovative healthcare solutions and products nationwide.

For instance, Abbott's FreeStyle Libre, the world's leading wearable glucose monitoring sensor-based technology, detects not only current glucose levels but also blood glucose trends and patterns, helping patients adjust their lifestyle while assisting healthcare professionals improve treatment decisions and identify the risks of diabetes complications.

In helping treat premature and newborn babies with patent ductus arteriosus, a heart defect that can develop soon after birth, the company has brought to Việt Nam the Amplatzer Piccolo Occluder, a pea-sized device that helps doctors repair holes in the tiny hearts of premature infants without riskier surgery.

Abbott has also made available in Việt Nam its innovative Clinical Decision Support system, a diagnostic informatics solution that uses AI to help medical experts improve clinical management. The solution contributes to improved health screening by categorising patients based on data analysis, applying risk assessment algorithms and providing better clinical interpretation.

Abbott and its foundation, the Abbott Fund, have provided over VNĐ280 billion (approximately US$12 million) in grants and product donations to address critical health issues, with a focus on improving nutrition, training healthcare staff, strengthening health systems, assisting healthcare professionals on the front line of the pandemic and expanding community education.

Those efforts and solutions contribute to advancing healthcare and help improve the strength and health of people throughout the nation.