Tuyen Quang improves facilities for ethnic students

The northern mountainous province of Tuyen Quang has invested more than 170 billion VND (7.9 million USD) to build new boarding schools and improve access to education for ethnic students in the locality.

Four high schools have been established and provided with learning and teaching equipment since 2011, bringing the total boarding schools to seven, according to the Deputy Director of the provincial Department of Education and Training Ma Quang Hieu.

The province also offered training courses for about 400 administrators and teachers to improve their professional skills and knowledge about the customs and languages of ethnic minorities.

More than 2,000 ethnic students have registered for the 2014 academic year, raising the rate of ethnic students in high schools to 5.1 percent from 0.7 percent in 2009.

Nearly 90 percent of ethnic minority students in Tuyen Quang have pursued their studies in colleges and universities nationwide after graduating from high school.

Work begins on youth village in Quang Binh province

The construction of a youth village in Quang Chau commune of Quang Trach district, the central province of Quang Binh, commenced on March 25.

The Quang Chau village will cover 1,206 hectares of land, 1,083 hectares of which will be zoned for agriculture and 60 hectares will serve as residential areas.

Additionally, two roads with a total length of more than 4 kilometres, two middle-voltage 22 kilovolt power lines, water supply facilities, a cultural centre, a nursery school, and a clinic will also be built within the village.

Once completed, the village will be able to accommodate 100 families and provide jobs for 200 people.

Construction of the village is expected to cost 53.9 billion VND (2.56 million USD) with 40.9 billion VND (1.9 million USD) sourced from the State budget and the remaining from the local budget. The construction will be managed by Quang Binh’s provincial charter of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.

Quang Chau is a disadvantaged commune in the northwest of Quang Trach district. Local residents earn their living primarily through agricultural and forestry activities. Although young people account for the majority of the communal population, many have gone to other localities to seek jobs with unstable incomes.

The establishment of the village is intended to encourage youth engagement in local socio-economic development.

Quang Chau village is one of 18 youth villages scheduled to be built in rural and border areas across Vietnam between 2013 and 2020. The project will call on young volunteers to settle in those areas to contribute to local socio-economic development and ensure defence and security.

HCMC Communist Youth Union honors 84 outstanding staffs, members

The Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth Union yesterday held a solemn ceremony to mark the 84th founding anniversary of the Youth Union (March 26, 1931-March 26, 2015) and grant Ly Tu Trong Awards 2015 for 84 outstanding staffs and Youth Union members.

Attending the ceremony was former State President Nguyen Minh Triet; Politburo member, Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Le Thanh Hai and Deputy Standing Secretary of HCMC Party Committee Vo Van Thuong.

Delivering the speech at the ceremony, the first Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee Nguyen Dac Vinh affirmed that Youth Union has played an important role in struggling and protecting the country’s sovereignty, specially, in integration progress, building the country. Reserving the good tradition, young generation has been willing to implement and finish excellently missions, which were given by Party and people.

On this occasion, the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth Union granted Ly Tu Trong Awards 2015 for 84 outstanding staffs and union members, which had active contributions in building and protecting the country, as well as got outstanding achievements in their work, study and scientific research.

Speaking at the ceremony, Secretary Le Thanh Hai expressed his pleasure with young generation’s outstanding achievements in work, study, contributing to develop national industrialization and modernization.

The secretary Hai asked all levels of youth union should be interested further in young people. All levels of Party need to praise further their awareness, listen to and acquire ideas of young people through talks and dialogues.

Lam Dong farmer smells of roses

Horticulturalists Vo Van Thanh and his wife Ngo Thi Ngoc Hieu are considered the millionaires of rose growing by their neighbours in the Central Highlands Province of Lam Dong.

The two have evolved a highly effective system of raising the flowers in green houses that provides revenue of about VND7 billion (about US$350,000) a year.

Farmer Vo Van Thanh, 42, and his wife Ngo Thi Ngoc Hieu, 40, who live in Lac Duong Township, earn an average of VND600 million ($27,903) monthly from their rose garden at the foot of Lang Biang mountain. It is considered the best farm in the district.

Thanh was born into a poor farming family of six children. He gave up school in the seventh grade and travelled around the country doing various jobs.

He married in 1998 and the couple decided to return to Lam Dong Province to rent a plot of barren land and cultivate vegetables.

However, the earnings from market gardening were not enough to feed and clothe the family, so the couple switched to growing roses in green houses.

Firstly, they experimentally planted roses on one hectare of rented land. Then, after learning that earnings were not stable, they expanded their farm.

After eight years, the couple now own four hectares of green houses and continue to hire more land.

Thanh searched through advanced technology on internet and applied it to growing roses. In 2010, he flew to Europe to examine rose-growing in Holland and France.

"The 15-day journey helped me widen my eyes," Thanh said. "I figured out that rose growers in European countries planted different varieties of flowers on various kind of land as well as applying advanced farming technology."

When he returned, Thanh applied the techniques he had observed to develop his farm.

Thanh and his wife invested VND27 billion ($1.25million) to develop greenhouse technology in sheds using advanced watering systems.

"The drop-by-drop water system not only saves water and labour, but also increases productivity," he said.

"I selected European technology suitable for the soil on my farm. It includes ways of choosing seedlings, growing, harvesting - and preservation for the market."

Each day Thanh provides 10,000 roses for local market. Wholesale traders came to Thanh's house to order flowers.

Now, he employs 25 labourers on salaries of VND4 million-VND8million.

Pham Trieu, deputy chairman of Lac Duong District, said Thanh was an outstanding farmer - and a pioneer of the rose trade in Lac Duong District.

Trieu said Thanh was not only one of the first to apply advanced technology in production, but he also helped local people use it.

PM asks local governments to help students to finish two national examinations

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered people’s committee leaders and the Ministry of Education and Training to encourage organizations and all sectors to help disadvantaged students to sit for the high school graduation examination and university entrance examination.

The government office has just issued the PM’s guidelines on organizing the two examinations. As per the PM’s instructions, the Ministry of Education and Training liaised with the Ministry of Finance to issue a document on the examination participation and enrollment fees which are not allowed to be higher than the present regulation.

The PM asked municipal and provincial people’s committees in co-ordination with the Ministry to organize examination following the guidelines. Local governments should pay attention to students and their relatives’ accommodation and regulate traffic, food safety and hygiene and security order.

Along with these, local administrators should call for the contribution of organizations and individuals to aid poor students from ethnic minority groups, from meager-income families and those living in distant and disadvantaged districts so that all students can sit for the examinations.

National anti-tuberculosis programme builds on encouraging outcomes

The National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) aims to reduce the TB incidence rate to 187 per 100,000 people and the fatality rate to below 18 per 100,000 in 2015, based on its encouraging outcomes in the previous year.

This year, all TB patients are expected to have access to standard treatment methods and receive sufficient and high-quality medicine, Director of the National Lung Hospital and Head of the NTP Nguyen Viet Nhung said in an interview granted to the Vietnam News Agency.

The programme also strives to control the rate of multidrug-resistant TB patients to fewer than 5 percent of the total newly-detected cases, while increasing the application of modern diagnosis and treatment technology and improving the qualifications of health workers, he said.

In 2014, the national campaign was carried out nationwide, discovering over 102,000 TB sufferers.

The TB prevention network was developed in 36 underprivileged districts of nine provinces, Quang Binh, Ha Tinh, Hoa Binh, Bac Giang, Nam Dinh, Nghe An, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai and Gia Lai.

Currently, 44 out of the 63 cities and provinces across the country have established tuberculosis and lung hospitals.

The Vietnamese Government also approved the TB prevention strategy through 2020, Nhung said.

As a result, 29 cities and provinces created steering committees for implementing the national TB strategy in January 2015.

The Global Fund also pledged an aid package of 42 million USD for the national TB prevention strategy between 2015 and 2017.

The broadened application of the GeneXpert technology has helped Vietnam to become one of the five countries around the world to successfully treat over 70 percent of the multidrug-resistant TB patients.

The Government and the Ministry of Health provided 75 billion VND (3.5 million USD) to ensure TB medicine supply in 2014. The World Health Organisation (WHO) will support this with medicine, including the US trial drugs Bedaquiline and Japanese Delamanid which have shown initial effective results in comparison with the current standard treatment methods.

According to the WHO, tuberculosis is the second leading infectious cause of death while multidrug-resistant TB is present in almost all countries around the world.-

Minority collective inspires Bac Kan

A farm half way up a mountain is used by a group of Tay ethnic people to grow vegetables and raise fish, cattle and poultry communally.

The farm is in tiny Ban Nghe Hamlet with 68 households in northern Bac Kan Province where most farming is still done on a house-by-house basis. The Tay people in this mountainous poor hamlet traditionally grow rice, maize, soya beans and cassava.

The idea of forming a communal farm was decided on by seven men, who each contributed their cultivated land to work together.

"Initially, people from the seven households planted rice and raised cattle and poultry together because our land is side by side," said Ma Van Nam, leader of the team.

"The cultivated land here is rich, but Tay people usually produce only one crop a year. However, local people had begun to demand fresh vegetables, so we planted some. The rest was a pleasant surprise, " Nam said.

The vegetables grew fast and sold well. Market gardens created much higher incomes than planting rice.

Early last year, the seven households decided to mortgage their land to expand their business.

With VND80 million (roughly US$3,700), they set up a farm to grow vegetables, raise fish, cattle and poultry.

Luong Van Hung, the hamlet head and a member of the farm, said the idea of mortgaging land doing cultivation together was really new for his people.

"Doing a collective economic model was very strange. Many people thought that we were insane when we decided to take the risk of growing vegetables," Hung added.

The group members quickly found out that to operate the farm professionally, they had to learn growing techniques as well as accounting and marketing.

Thanks to applying these techniques to production, the 21ha-farm supplies vegetables, fish and meat for the whole district and neighbouring areas.

Their farm provides a stable income of about VND80 million ($3,700) a year for each household.

"At present, many other households would like to join us, but they hesitate", said Hung.

Along with growing vegetable, breeding fishes, cattle and poultry, the farmers also have 16ha of commercial timber trees. The area of forest also has high promise.

At present, the farm creates jobs for 14 regular workers with monthly income of VND2 million ($100).

Establishment of the farm not only creates stable jobs and income, it supplies safe vegetable and foods and also helps local people change their ways of thinking.

One of the difficulties for the farm group is transport, which can be costly, so there is talk of building a road from the hamlet to the farm.

The economic model helps spread advanced technology and plant and animal diversification throughout the region, contributing to hunger and poverty reduction.

The local authority has taken notice and said it wants to expand the model throughout the province.

Quang Binh villages to get solar power

Authorities in central Quang Binh Province have conducted research on a solar-power project to make sure it is cost effective in all areas that it reaches.

If it is not effective in all villages, authorites said they would switch to normal network power to link them up.

In 2012, Quang Binh started a US$14 million project to supply solar power to remote villages previously relying on generators, kerosene or candles to produce light.

The Korean Government donated $12 million of the cost through an Official Development Assistance (ODA) agreement. Viet Nam provided the remainder.

The solar project is the biggest of its its kind so far in Viet Nam, Vo Quang Minh, head of the project management board told Nong Thon Ngay Nay (Countryside Today) newspaper.

The project covers eight communes in four districts and will eventually supply nearly 1,300 households and 78 offices.

Minh said that some areas would have electricity by the end of the year.

Last October, Chairman of the Quang Binh People's Committee, Nguyen Huu Hoai, also approved another project to supply network power to several remote villages.

It is being backed by the provincial Department of Industry and Trade with VND368 billion ($17.5 million) from the State budget.

The project, to hook-up Tan Trach and Thuong Trach communes in Bo Trach District to the national grid, is being carried out after authorities realised that solar power would not be best for most of the villages.

Work is expected to be completed next year.

A local official said all projects would be completed around the same time. However, he admitted that all of the solar energy equipment already installed in Tan Trach and Thuong Trach communes, which worth about US$7 million, would go to waste.

Phan Van Thuong, director of the Quang Binh Department of Industry and Trade, said that solar energy could be only used in homes and not to manufacture goods.

Lam Dong unveils its go green plan

The Lam Dong Province People's Committee on Sunday unveiled a plan for the "Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, sustainable management of forest resources, conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks" to be implemented through 2020.

Its main targets are to increase the province's forest cover and reduce carbon emissions by 2 million tonnes a year, equal to 27 per cent of the emissions by the forestry sector.

To achieve the targets, the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province will adjust the zoning of three types of forests – special use, protective and production.

It will also limit switching of special use and protective forests to other purposes.

Priority will be given for allocating forest areas to ethnic households, poor households without land and local communities to protect.

The province will replant forests and afforest barren lands and lands where commercial plants had been grown.

This year, for instance, Dam Rong, Lam Ha, Lac Duong and Da Hoai districts will grow 260ha of forest on barren land.

In 2016-20 the province will plant an average of 1,070ha of forests a year on barren lands.

It will also provide companies that protect forests with financial and technical assistance to manage the forests.

The plan, to cost around VND1.75 trillion (US$83 million), features several support activities to improve the livelihoods of families living near forests to reduce their exploitation of the forests.

The activities include helping them improve their crops and providing them loans.

Lam Dong has a total area 977,219ha. Of this, more than 596,600ha has been zoned off for forests.

The forests play an important role in protecting the environment and regulating water resources from rivers, springs, lakes in the province and the rest of the region.

National strategy formulated for NCD prevention

The Prime Minister has just approved the National Strategy for the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) for 2015-2020.

The general objective is to prevent and control cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

It aims to manage the progression of the diseases, contributing to protecting, caring for and enhancing health quality and socio-economic development.

By 2025, roughly 70 percent of the adult population is expected to be aware of NCDs and their impact on public health and the nation’s socio-economic development as well as prevention methods.

Other targets include reducing 30 percent of tobacco use and 10 percent of harmful alcohol use among adults in 2015 and bringing the rate of diabetes to below eight percent among people aged 30-69.

In order to realise the targets for the prevention and control of NCDs, the strategy points to measures to strengthen the enforcement of legal frameworks and relevant policies to control risk factors while encouraging healthier choices.

Publicity campaigns are needed to raise individual and population awareness and understanding of NCDs.

The strategy highlights the need to improve skills and expertise in treating the diseases while expanding NCD-related healthcare services at businesses and schools.

Preventive services should also be enhanced to control risk determinants and detect pre-NCDs symptoms.

Non-communicable diseases—such as high-blood pressure, pulmonary disease, asthma, diabetes and cancer—account for two-thirds of the total disease incidence and health-related mortality in Vietnam.

Vietnam currently has 12.5 million nationals with high blood pressure, 2.5 million diabetics and more than 2 million others suffering from COPD and asthma.

About 125,000 new cases of cancer are detected every year, according to the Ministry of Health’s Preventive Medicine Department.

In 2012, there were 520,000 health-related deaths including more than 379,000 caused by NCDs, mostly cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and COPD. Put another way, seven in every 10 health-related deaths were from non-infectious diseases. Major contributing factors include smoking, alcohol abuse, unhealthy eating habits and lack of physical activity.

NCD treatment can cost 40-50 times more than communicable disease treatment, requiring advanced technology, expensive medicine and prolonged treatment.

Survey shows lack of eye care for kids

A recent survey on paediatric eye care released on March 25 by the Ministry of Health's Health Strategy and Policy Institute (HSPI) showed big obstacles and gaps in paediatric eye care services in Vietnam.

The survey was conducted by experts from HSPI and the Viet Nam National Institute of Ophthalmology (VNIO) in Hanoi, Thai Nguyen, Thua Thien-Hue, Da Nang, Kon Tum, Binh Dinh, HCM City and Can Tho from August to November 2014.

The survey found that 7.6% of every 10,000 Vietnamese children were blind, compared with 7% per 10,000 globally. The number of blind boys was four times higher than that of girls, it found. The major causes of the problem in Vietnam included refractive errors, corneal scarring, posterior segments and orbit abnormality.

"Vietnam has around 12.6 million children, but there are only four medical centres specialising in paediatric eye care," said Vu Thi Minh Hanh, vice director of HSPI. "They are at VNIO in Hanoi and in Hue, Danang and HCM City. Only 10.9% of children with refractive errors (RE) were screened and only 14.8% of RE children were prescribed glasses."

The survey said that the State budget for paediatric eye care was limited and the main financial sources were hospital fees, health insurance funds and international support. And many paediatric eye care services hadn't been paid by the health insurance funds.

"The country has only 8 optometrists who have been trained for 4 years, much lower than the Vision 2020 expectation of 4 per 1 million people," Hanh said.

Eye care treatment is unevenly distributed in Vietnam, according to the survey. About 87% of ophthalmologists are working in urban areas, 86% of eye care professionals work at the provincial level, 11% work at the district level and 2% work at the communal level, according to the survey.

Hanh said that paediatric eye care manpower is limited both in term of quantity and quality, due to shortcomings in training and incentives. The country has only 40 paediatric ophthalmologists nationwide.

The country has 1,500 eye doctors, including 200 doctors from private hospitals, according to the survey. And 2,224 assistant doctors and nurses specialise in ophthalmology. However, only 40 of the 1,500 eye doctors specialise in paediatric eye care.

Difficult to attract good doctors to medical facilities in communes

Medical clinics in communes are the grassroots of the health sector; however, medical quality in some places has not met people’s treatment demand, reported Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien at a meeting “Moving toward nationwide healthcare coverage in Vietnam”.

The meeting was held yesterday by the Ministry of Health, The World Health Organization and EU in the central province of Thua Thien – Hue with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam and more than 300 international and Vietnamese delegators.

The country has 11,000 medical facilities in communes; 622 hospitals in districts with total 68,959 beds and 651 general facilities with 6,752 beds. Primary healthcare services have provided treatment to all inhabitants including residents in mountainous, border crossings and islands.

This is recognized and appraised by international organizations as a good point in carrying out the millennium goals in developing medicine, said Ms. Tien.

However, there have been shortcomings and challenges in attracting good physicians to work in facilities in distant regions and medical clinics in communes are not well-equipped; consequently, people flocked to big hospitals causing the overloading in hospitals. In addition, the health sector has neglected investment in primary healthcare services in families.

Chief Representative of the World Health Organization in Vietnam Takeshi Kasai said at the meeting that the average life-span of Vietnamese people will increase by 8 years since 1980. An old person usually has chronic diseases but medical workers in facilities in communes are unable to treat chronic disease.

Delegators discussed and proposed feasible measures to improve personnel, financial policies, facilities and how to attract more good doctors work in medical hospitals in communes in a bid to increase primary healthcare moving to universal coverage in Vietnam.

Speaking at the meeting, Deputy PM Dam asked the Ministry to continue working out a project for planning a better medical clinics in communes in which verifies the role of these clinics and the relation between public healthcare network and family doctor network; technique services in commune clinics as well as training more medical workers for commune facilities along with policies to draw attention of good doctors to distant clinics.

HCM City to hold hospital drug supply bidding

The center for purchase of goods and public assets under the HCMC Department of Health will hold a competitive bidding to seek drug suppliers for public medical centers and hospitals in the city.

The bidding will have two packages worth a total of over VND9.13 trillion (US$425.67 million).

The city will use its own budget, health insurance fund, hospital fees and other sources to fund medicine purchases, according to a decision of the city government.

The first bidding package worth some VND3.79 trillion is to acquire branded drugs and the other valued at over VND5.34 trillion is to buy generic drugs.  

At present, there are 31 hospitals managed by the Health Department and 23 others by districts.  

Nguyen Tan Binh, director of the department, said drug prices are different at different hospitals as hospitals hold separate tenders for drug supplies. This leads to big medicine price differentials and prices of some drugs at hospitals are 20% higher than market levels.

Therefore, competitive bidding is expected to help lower medicine prices at hospitals by 20-30% and at the same time facilitate drug price management.

VNA/VNS/VOV/SGT/SGGP/Dantri