Through a tumultuous 20th-century period of revolution and foreign wars, Vietnam’s public health system was praised by international observers as a “bright light in an epidemiologically dark world,” standing out for its accomplishments in infectious disease control. Since the country’s transition to a “market economy with socialist orientation” in the mid-1980s, however, some of these achievements have been reversed as the “renovation” of national systems for welfare and health leaves gaps in the social safety net. A series of cholera outbreaks that spread through Northern...