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 programs.
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.
Source: VNA