Joining Hands for Poverty Reduction in Vietnam

"Although a third of Vietnamese children are stunted or too short for their age, the rate of malnutrition-caused stunting has tended to decline," concluded the review conference on “Joint Programme on Integrated Nutrition and Food Security Strategies for Children and Vulnerable Groups in Vietnam” held recently in Hanoi.

As a brand-new initiative for the first-ever linkage between agriculture and health with nutritional interventions and food security, the joint programme of the Government of Vietnam and the United Nations, with a budget of US$3.5 million, is helping Vietnam reduce stunting, prevent future malnutrition in children, and achieve two Millennium Development Goals - poverty and child mortality, by 2015.

In the past three years, the programme has helped improve the rate of breastfeeding in six provinces and organised some activities with farmers in order to increase the supply of safe, quality foods. At the Baby-Friendly Hospitals visited for the final assessment, the rate of early breastfeeding rose from 70.5 percent to 97 percent, according to the report. Breastfeeding research groups based on benefited villages in An Giang province also have the rate of breastfeeding increase from 80 percent to 92 percent. The rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months rose from 0 to 12 percent.

On the national level, successful policy lobbying helped extend women’s maternity leave from four to six months, specified in the amended Labour Code adopted in 2012. This policy took effect in January 2013. To further protect the breastfeeding rights of mothers and children, the Law on Advertising 2012 prohibited any advertisement of product implying breast milk substitution and related products for children aged below 24 months old, starting to take effect in January 2013.

The UN has also supported the implementation of models of food security and nutrition interventions, with a focus on vulnerable groups in remote areas. As a result, in the future, Vietnam will be better prepared to respond to impacts of floods, droughts and other forms of natural disasters. A global information and early warning system for agriculture and food was also established in order to protect most vulnerable communities by sending early warnings about possible food crisis in provinces and districts.

In Vietnam, nutritional deficiency is often quite severe in remote mountainous areas and the degree of food security among cities and rural areas and among ethnic groups also differs. Ensuring local food availability for better nutrition for communities is also one of major supports of this joint programme. Through this programme, the national nutrition supervision system has been given a facelift, used recommended international indicators and distribution data by geographic location, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status to prioritise areas that need support most. At the same time, the programme introduced effective hospital models and provided community-based malnutrition treatment for severely malnourished children with locally made functional foods.

Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long, who represents the Government of Vietnam, said that the ending of the programme also opens to a new page for the future multi-field integration of nutrition and food security. Results of this joint programme will be continue to be implemented sustainably to improve health and nutrition of mothers and children in Vietnam, thus helping the country realise State policies, especially relating to the Millennium Development Goals.

Under the sponsorship of the Government of Spain through the MDG Achievement Fund, the joint programme helps redirect the national nutrition strategy in the 2012 -2020 period, implement the national food security strategy, the national action plan on nutrition and neonatal feeding and children under five years old, and provincial action plans.

Quynh Anh