The preservation of President Ho Chi Minh’s body is of great significance to the cause of national construction and defence, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at a conference reviewing 50 years preserving the President’s body on August 29.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc speaks at the conference.  

President Ho Chi Minh passed away on September 2, 1969. In the following days, his body was embalmed by Soviet Union experts and a special Vietnamese medical team under a joint agreement between the two governments.

The Government leader stressed that the decision made by the Party Politburo and Central Committee to embalm President Ho Chi Minh’s body and build the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is a right one which reflects the endless respect and love for the President of generations of Vietnamese, meets the people’s wishes and is in line with the nation’s tradition of “remembering the source when drinking water.”

He took the occasion to thank the Party, State and people of the Soviet Union in the past and Russia at present for their help in preserving the body of President Ho Chi Minh.

Head of the State-level medical science council Prof. Dr. Dang Vu Minh presented the council’s report on its examination of the body from July 12-18 this year, assessing that the embalmed body of President Ho Chi Minh is well preserved, with no changes in data recorded in earlier examinations during 1970-2009.  

President Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body is placed in a glass coffin inside the granite mausoleum, which was modeled after Lenin’s tomb in Moscow.

The mausoleum welcomed about 1.2 million visitors in the first half of 2019. It has become an important landmark of the capital city and is integral to the political and social history of Vietnam.