The Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population Fund held a ceremony in Hanoi to mark World Population Day (Illustrative image. Source: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – The Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA) jointly held a ceremony in Hanoi on July 11 to mark 40 years of
Vietnam-UNFPA cooperation and World Population Day (July 11).
In her remarks, Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh lauded the Ministry of
Health, relevant organisations, officials and staff for their contributions to
the Vietnam-UNFPA relations as well as the population and family planning
achievements in the country over the past 40 years.
The population and family planning work is an important part in the country’s
development strategy, she said, highlighting that Vietnam-UNFPA cooperative relations
plays a significant roles in Vietnam’s population and family planning programmes.
Since Vietnam won the United Nations Population Award in 1999, the country has
made concerted efforts to stabilise its population scale and enhance population
quality, she said.
However, Vietnam still faced a number of challenges in its population-family
planning work such as increasing population, rapid population ageing and high gender
imbalance rate, which put pressure on the nation’s social security, Thinh
stated.
The Vice President said that reproductive healthcare, especially for juvenile
people, has not been improved yet while advantages of the golden population
structure has not been fully exploited.
She called on party committees and administrations at all levels, organisations
and individuals to pay due attention to population-family planning issues,
promote communications on reproductive healthcare as well as improve the gender
imbalance at birth.
Expressing gratitude to the UNFPA for its support to Vietnam, Vice President
Thinh hoped that the fund, governments, international and non-governmental organisations
will continue assisting Vietnam in the population-family planning work and
other sectors.
According to the General Office for Population and Family Planning, Vietnam had
a high birth rate (above five children per couple) in 1970, however, the figure
fell sharply to 2.09 in 2016.
The percentage of people using contraceptive
methods rose to 67 percent in 2016 from 37 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, maternal
mortality rate showed a rapid decline, from 233 per 100,000 live births in 1990
to 58.3 per 100,000 live births in 2016.
On the occasion, a photo exhibition on Vietnam-UNFPA cooperation is organised
from July 11-16 at No. 93 Dinh Tien Hoang Street, Hanoi. -VNA