Viet Nam has made many laudable achievements in the field of improving the health and living quality of children, especially in reducing the under-five child mortality rate, said Senior Programme Coordinator Maniza S. Zaman of UNICEF Viet Nam.
Viet Nam
has made many laudable achievements in the field of improving the health and living quality of children, especially in reducing the under-five child mortality rate, said Senior Programme Coordinator Maniza S. Zaman of UNICEF Viet Nam.
Speaking with a Viet Nam News Agency reporter on August 31 on the sidelines of the two-day dissemination workshop on the Regional Child Survival Strategy held in Ha Noi on August 30-31, Maniza said “ Viet Nam has certainly paid quite a lot of attention to the work for child survival, including maternal and infant health.”
“Big strides have been made in reducing infant mortality and under-five mortality rate,” she added.
Viet Nam ’s infant mortality rate has been reduced from above 40-45 per thousand in 1998 to about 20 per thousand. Similarly, the under-five mortality rate has been reduced from 69 per thousand to 30.
Maniza said she wants to congratulate the Government of Viet Nam “for more gains, including polio eradication in 2000, the maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination in 2005, and its recent achievement of the universal iodinisation programme whereby over 90 percent of Vietnamese people are using iodised salt.”
The success of the programme, “is very critical to prevent iodine-deficiency related diseases in children,” she said, adding that the other important success Viet Nam had made was the universal immunisation coverage in 1990.
In regards to the possibility that Viet Nam could achieve the Millenium Development Goals by the year 2015, Maniza said, “ Viet Nam is totally on track to reach the MDGs on child issues. We have all the reasons to believe that Viet Nam will reach them.”
However, she also warned of the risks that disparities in economic development among different regions in all countries, including Viet Nam , which can lead to inequitable access to health and nutrition care and services, will put more challenges to the improvement of children’s living conditions and health.
The UN coordinator said that UNICEF pledges to continue to support Viet Nam and said “let’s work together to try to address the remaining issues that we have in Viet Nam .” The Regional Child Survival Strategy was jointly developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) for the East Asia and Pacific region
(Source: VNA)
