Children's well-being targeted

Children play a traditional game in Thanh An Commune, Can Gio District in HCM City. The city has earmarked $2.7 million to improve protection of city children. — VNA/VNS Photo The Anh

HCM CITY — HCM City had earmarked VND52 billion (US$2.7 million) for implementing a 10 year (2011-2020) action programme for children, a senior official said yesterday.

Phan Thanh Minh, head of the labour department's child protection and care office, said at a workshop that the programme would target health and nutrition, education, entertainment, water and living environment for children as well as protecting them from violence and all forms of abuse.

The city aims to have 97.5 per cent of children under one year old getting all the required vaccines and 98.7 per cent of children aged between six and 36 months old get their Vitamin A doses each year.

Another target is to have the average height of children under five years of age increase by at least 1.5cm and the rate of obesity among this age group kept to under 15 per cent.

The rate of bronchial infection among children aged between eight and 12 will be brought down to 1.5 per cent.

Infant mortality for one-year-olds will be brought down to one per 1,000 and that of children under five years old to 1.67 per 1,000.

Minh said that to implement these targets, the city would open health clinics in all wards, communes and towns and staff them with qualified health personnel to ensure the wellbeing of mothers and children.

He said the city would also strengthen public awareness campaigns on health and nutrition.

The city would create favourable conditions for all children aged six to enter first grade, and all high-school-age students would get admission to schools by 2020.

In order to protect the children, the city would try to reduce the number of street children, those working in harmful and dangerous environments, and those subjected to different kinds of abuse.

All children with the disabilities would be placed on welfare and given needed assistance, Minh said.

Efforts would be made to build enough cultural houses for children so that they would not lack healthy entertainment options, at least in 90 per cent of the city's wards, communes and towns as required by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism for children. — VNS

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Measles campaign targets 7.5 mln children

A new campaign launched by the Ministry of Health, including two vaccinations against measles for children aged between nine and 18 months, will cover 7.5 million children nationwide from September 24, in an effort to cover at least 95 percent of the target population.

"More than 7,000 cases of measles were reported in 2009, that's why we've launched the campaign," said Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI).

The EPI campaign will especially focus on outlying provinces, and replace the previous policy that dates back to 2002, in which children previously received two measles vaccinations at nine months and six years of age.

Health experts explained that two vaccinations within nine months would increase resistance rates from measles to more than 95 percent.

However, health experts discovered that only 85 percent of children had been protected after receiving their first shot of measles vaccine.

The three-month campaign was part of a campaign to minimize outbreaks of measles by 2012, said Hien, who is also director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

About 15 percent of children under the age of six faced the risk of catching measles, and potentially acted as measles carriers, infecting other vulnerable groups, said Hien.

According to EPI statistics, the measles outbreak in 2009 was the largest since the country began a second round of booster vaccinations.

Four months after the first case was found, the outbreak spread to 57 provinces and cities, then to all 63 localities. However, no fatalities were reported. The measles infection rate focused mainly on 1-5-year-old and 18-26-year-old groups.

Priority will be given to implementing the campaign in mountainous and remote areas in northern provinces.

Measles vaccines, syringes and injection needles were provided by the World Health Organization through the United Nations Fund for Children.

According to EPI statistics, measles outbreaks occurred throughout the country, with more than 1,600 measles cases reported during the first eight months of 2010, of which nearly had 1,100 appeared in the south.

Vietnam has about 12 million of children aged below six years of age.

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