Child care and protection stepped up in Vietnam
Ha Noi, June 1 (VNA) -- Child care and protection have long been a prime concern of Viet Nam's State, which has issued a series of legal documents to this effect over the past decade.
Implementing the Government's decision, the Health ministry has since 1982 built many national programmes to serve the people, especially children. These programmes include enlarged vaccination programmes and other programmes to prevent child malnutrition, diarrhoea, tuberculosis, vitamin A deficiency, malaria, anaemia, goitre, acute respiratory infection, and other diseases frequently harmful to children.
The programmes have helped improve Vietnamese children's health, reducing their malnutrition rate to 33.13 percent last year from 39.8 percent in 1985 and cutting in half the mortality rate of under-five children in that time frame.
A network of medical care and treatment for children has been expanded from the centre to the grassroots. Numerous paediatric hospitals at the central and provincial levels have been set up in Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hai Phong, Vinh, Can Tho, Da Nang, and Dong Nai.
Almost all provincial clinics have paediatric wards that account for about 13.5 percent of the total patient beds. About 64.5 percent of their medical doctors are paediatricians.
About 27 percent of all hospitals at the district level also have paediatric wards and 25 percent of medical centres and infirmaries have doctors responsible for child healthcare and treatment.
Such indicators as weight, height and nutrition suggest that Vietnamese children today are healthier in body and spirit than they were a decade ago. However, the number of children suffering from infectious diseases still remains high.
The rate of malnutrition among under-five children and vitamin deficiency is still very high. About 14.9 percent of children suffer from goitre and between 20-60 percent of them, from iron deficiency.
Worse still, at least 6,000 children are killed and 30,000 others injured in traffic accidents every year, while the number of children suffering from food poisoning is on the rise.
The Government has called for joint efforts to ensure that more than 90 percent of children are vaccinated against seven child killers: tuberculosis, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, and virus hepatitis. It has also called for the vaccination of more than 90 percent of pregnant women against tetanus, diarrhorea, typhoid and hepatitis.
To this end, the Government has asked all families, schools, mass organizations and social communities to involve themselves in the nationwide movement to provide the country's children with safer and healthier lives.--VNA
