One in every three Vietnamese children under the age of five is either malnourished or overweight as a result of poor diets and a food system that is failing them.

At the ceremony, the UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2019 report was officially released.

The report provides a comprehensive assessment of 21st-century child malnutrition in all its forms. It describes a triple burden of malnutrition, namely undernutrition, hidden hunger caused by a lack of essential nutrients,and overweight among children under the age of five.

The report warns that poor eating and feeding practicesstart from the earliest days of a child’s life. This finding was highlighted by a landscape analysis carried out by the Vietnam National Institute of Nutrition in 2019 on complementary feeding and maternal nutrition as part of the Regional Initiative for Sustained Improvements in Nutrition and Growth (RISING).

The analysiss howed that complementary feeding practices and maternal nutrition in Vietnamare largely inadequate and inappropriate, contributing to the burden ofmalnutrition.

In Vietnam, inadequate maternal diets lead to underweightand overweight women who are more likely to have low birth weight babies. Meanwhile, inadequate diets during the complementary feeding phase, when the first foodsare introduced to young children aged between 6 months and 2 years, are common in the country.

According to the 2015 national nutrition surveillance, 18 percent of the children do not have a diet that is sufficiently diverse and 36percent are not fed frequently enough.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam saidmalnutrition among Vietnamese, particularly children, remains at a high levelcompared to other nations in the region.

He added that there is 57 percent of the local populationeating a diet that lacks of vegetables and nutrition but contains high sodium andstarch intake.

The official tasked the Ministry of Health with boostingmeasures to tackle the issue, particularly at alarming areas like the northernmountainous and Central Highlands regions as well as working with relevantagencies to improve the diets of women and young children.

On the occasion, Dam, UNICEF representatives, and otherdelegates signed a commitment to improving the diets of women and youngchildren during the complementary feeding period./. VNA

French artisan teaches disabled children to make pottery

Parisian ceramic artisan Oliver Oet, 62 years old, has crossed thousands of miles with his Japanese ceramic production techniques to bring new life to the disabled children at Hue Hope Centre in Hue.

Hyperactive children with ADHD are not treated because of parents’ misperceptions

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is fairly common among children. However, because of parents’ lack of knowledge, the disorder cannot be identified and treated in a timely manner.