A device (2) for carrying on the body of a user to generate a vacuum for medical applications, in particular, for the vacuum therapy of wounds on the human or animal body, has a vacuum-producing device and a vessel (10) that is disposable after use for receiving body fluids, in particular, wound exudates suctioned out of the wound, and with a connection (12) for a suction tube leading to the body for this purpose, wherein the vacuum-producing device is disposed in a first housing part (4) of the device and the vessel (10) forms a second housing part (8) of the device or is disposed in or on the second housing part (8), and the housing parts (4, 8) are separably fixed one against the other, the device (2) having fastening means so that it can be worn and carried on the body of the user. In order to make handling the device more user-friendly, the device is constituted in such a way that the housing parts (4, 8) can be separably fixed to each other by snap-in, latching, or other positive-action locking or back-gripping (34) mechanisms and the locking or back-gripping mechanism (34) can be moved into a release direction by a manually operable operating element (32). The first and/or second housing part (4, 8) is constituted for manual gripping so that the device or the first or second housing part (4, 8) can be gripped in this manner and can be separated from the other housing part, and the manually operable operating element (32) for the locking or back-gripping mechanism (34) is provided in the region of the manual gripping so that a user or caregiver can, with only one hand, release the locking or back-gripping mechanism (34) while gripping the one housing part (8, 4) and release and remove it from the other housing part (4, 8).