According to the office's statistics, 20 provinces in Vietnam are home to ethnic minority people that account for 20 percent of the country's total population, and most of those provinces have high birth-rates compared to the rest of the country.
Most of them have a fertilitiy rate of 2.35 births per woman and eight have a rate of over 2.5, including Ha Giang and Kon Tum with rates of up to 3, against the national average of 2.23.
Tran Thi Thanh Mai, director of the office's Department of Communication and Education, said low education levels were behind the problem.
"Their knowledge on family planning and contraceptive measures is limited," she said.
These provinces don't have enough health workers to educate the public about family planning, she added.
Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Ba Thuy said the office would further promote population and reproductive healthcare work to help ethnic minority people reach the country's targeted reduced fertility rate.
In the next few years, family planning services in ethnic minority regions would be further focused, said Thuy.
Measures to control birth-rates and reduce the imbalance of sexes would also be applied.
Thuy said that investment in human resources and finance for the ethnic
regions must be increased to achieve the desired results over the next
10 years./.
