Long An focuses on improving population quality

Mothers of 17,777 newborns have screened two times, achieving 97.4 percent of the plan.

As per reports at the meeting, the province’s natural rate of population growth was 0.635 percent in 2017, achieving the goal of under 0.7 percent. The rate of families having third baby was 2.75 percent, a year-on-year decrease of 0.37 percent, accounting for 370 percent of the plan. The sex ratio at birth of baby boys over girls was 106.534/100 slightly down by 2.,02 percent compared in 2016 at 108.55/100.

No family in sixty nine over 192 communes had third child, completing 95 percent of the plan, as per reports. Moreover, some 5,696 newly-wed couples have had medical check-up before getting married.

When it comes to prenatal screening, medical workers had conducted heel prick test for 18,106 newborns taking up 99.2 percent of total newborns in the province. Moreover, mothers of 17,777 newborns have screened two times, achieving 97.4 percent of the plan.

However, in addition to accomplishment in the health-care mission, the number of abortions performed in the year was still high with 17.11 percent of total newborns; worse, the abortion rate amongst teenagers was up to 5.5 percent total abortion cases in the province.

Many measures were proposed at the meeting to improve efficiency in the task of reproductive health and family planning. In 2018, the sector of population will continue raising the quality of population and reproductive health with the aim to maintain proper birth rate and solving population structure, population redistribution for the province’s industrialization and modernization.

The Department of Health gave awards to 20 winners in the writing competition of gender imbalance control to release in media.

On the occasion, the provincial People’s Committee presented flags of merit to two teams and certificates of merit to 17 teams and 52 individuals that had good achievements in population/ family planning movement. Additionally, representatives of 69 communes were recommended and rewarded as they had done well in encouraging locals not to have third baby.

Moreover, the Department of Health gave awards to 20 winners in the writing competition of gender imbalance control to release in media.

Deputy Director of the Department of Health Dr. Vo Van Thang said that the sector should focus on performing the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam’s resolution No.21-NQ/TW, on population task in the new situation. Furthermore, the sector has to closely work with party organization, local administrations, unions and population workers to carry out its missions./.

By Ngoc Man, Huynh Huong - Translated by Uyen Phuong