Midwife system faces major obstacles in rural provinces  

The modern, village-based midwife system, considered the best way to take care of reproductive health in remote areas, has met problems in northern Lai Chau Province.

Luu Thi Diu, an official at a medical station located in a Mong ethnic neighbourhood, said local residents were hesitant to contact medical workers and preferred to get assistance from women in their own family - and husbands.

While both the old and modern systems are based on home births, the new system provides an option for delivery at a medical centre. However, the main problem is that there are simply not enough new-style midwives in the large province.

Healthcare workers examine children of the La Hu ethnic community at the Bum To Clinic in Muong Te District, Lai Chau Province. The village-based midwife model has faced difficulty in the province due to unsound customs and a shortage of financial and human resources. (Photo: VNS)

Director of the Lai Chau Department of Health Nguyen Cong Huan said that to maintain the model of village-based midwives, regular training and more allowance were needed.

"The present allowance for midwives is only VND50,000 (US$2.30) a month, and in some communes, midwives receive nothing from the authorities," he said.

"Choosing a proper girl to train her into a village-based midwife is also difficult because not everyone can acquire the necessary knowledge," said Huan.

The new-style midwives must be local residents, married and educated to at least grade five standard (about age 11), as their work is not only to help women in labour, but also to pass on information on reproductive health and general health.

"To maintain the model, the health sector should standardise a training course for midwives, increase their allowances and give financial support for localities to implement the model," said Huan.

The province's present rate of maternal mortality is about 90 per100,000 deliveries whereas formerly without the village-based midwives, the rate was more than 100 per 100,000, according to statistics provided by the provincial Centre for Reproductive Health Care.

Thanks to the model of village-based midwives, during the past two years hundreds of pregnant ethnic women in the province received help during labour, whereas traditionally their habit was not to use any medical workers.

This year the province has trained more than 50 village-based midwives to add to the 150 already on the job. By 2015 the province aims to lower maternal mortality to less than 54 per 100,000 live births, almost half the rate of a few years ago.

VND1 bln to assist Hoang Sa archipelago fishermen

The central Quang Ngai province’s Labour Federation has given over VND980 million to four fishermen crippled while catching fish on the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago.

The four fishermen include Ly Son district’s Vo Van Tam, owner of ship QNg 9647, Ly Son district’s Vo Minh Vuong, owner of ship QNg 96437, Nghia An commune’s Huynh Cuoc, and Nguyen Dat, also from Tu Nghia district’s Nghia An commune.

They received VND500 million, VND300 million, VND150 million, and VND30 million, respectively.

Ngo Thi Kim Ngoc, Chairwoman of Quang Ngai’s Labour Federation, said the financial support came from money raised by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL) on behalf of fishermen working on the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos.

Since launching the fund, the VGCL has given more than VND5 billion in support to 21 fishermen in Quang Ngai province.

The VGCL plans to assist a further 72 fishermen—from 7 cities and provinces spanning Danang to Binh Thuan—stricken on the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos. The financial assistance totals VND8.76 billion.

13 fishermen from Quang Ngai alone will be allocated support amounting to VND2.93 billion.

School-based health clinics lack basic sanitation facilities

At Ngoc Tao Junior Secondary School in Phuc Tho District, all the students must share one sink. And at the nearby primary school, the recently completed hand-washing system does not even work.

Although city schools received VND19.7 billion (US$938,000) this year to improve their health programmes, the money was only enough for "a few schools," said Nguyen Hoa Binh, deputy director of the Ha Noi Preventive Medicines Centre.

As a result, administrators in both urban and suburban districts are struggling to implement even basic hygiene measures.

"The most serious problem affecting schools in suburban areas is the lack of hand-washing basins," said Nguyen Minh Hai, secretary of the School Health Programme.

While most of the planned improvements rely on funds from students' voluntary health insurance, in many schools few students purchase such insurance. At Ngoc Tao Primary School, only 24-26 per cent of students buy voluntary health insurance, and at the district secondary school, 40 per cent do so.

Due to the lack of funds, schools' medicine cabinets are empty or filled with expired pills. Additionally, city schools do not have enough medical workers.

According to regulations, each school should have one medical worker, but more than 50 schools do not have any, and only 63 per cent of the city's 2,500 schools have health clinics with the regulated area of 12 sq.m.

Moreover, most medical workers in schools are not doctors, so they can only address a limited range of health problems.

Hoang Hong Thuy, principal of the Lang Thuong Primary School in Dong Da District, said she did not even dream of employing a doctor to work in the school's health clinic, as no medical school graduate would accept the salary of VND1 million ($50) per month.

"At the beginning of this school year, I was very glad to employ a nurse who graduated from health vocational school. But after only two months, she quit to work in a private health clinic where the salary was three times higher," she said.

At present, the school has assigned a teacher to work in the health clinic, as the budget cannot stretch to pay a medical professional.

Nguyen Thu Hang used to work in a health clinic in a junior secondary school in Ha Noi. She said she quit the job not only because of the low salary, but also because working in the school prevented her from studying more to improve her professional skills.

"To attract more medical workers to work in schools' health clinics, the city should pay them as much as teachers," she said.

Poor, ethnic people to get legal support

Poor people and ethnic minorities will no longer have to pay for legal services, according to a decision issued by the Prime Minister last week.

Decision 59, which takes effect from February 15, will apply to economically challenged communes in coastal, island and border areas as well as mountainous areas where ethnic people live.

These communes are not included in the 61 districts specified in the recent poverty reduction policy resolution.

To make legal services more accessible, each local commune will be provided with VND6 million (US$285) annually to establish legal assistance clubs and another VND8 million (over $380) to organise related activities.

Additionally, qualified local Government officials will be given financial support to attend legal courses.

Ngo Thi Chinh, deputy chairman of the People's Committee of northern Yen Bai Province, said the decision, which would be applied to 32 poor communes in the province, would help improve people's awareness of the law and thus protect their rights.

Disabled information technology expert dies

The handicapped information technology expert Nguyen Cong Hung, 31, died on Monday on a business trip from HCM City to southern Vinh Long Province.

Hung was one of 10 people to win an inaugural Volunteer Award for his work on improving services for disabled people.

He ran a social enterprise called "The Will to Live" that assists the disabled in getting vocational training and finding work. Their courses cover English, web programming, and IT skills for the office. More than 750 people have graduated from the courses, half of whom have already secured jobs.

Hung also set up a website for this purpose, The Will to Live, which had more than 30,000 members around the world as of 2006. He was also honoured as an "IT Knight" by E-Chip magazine.

Hung, who only weighed 20kg, was born in central Nghe An Province with a serious disease that paralyzed his whole body when he was two years old. He dropped out of school in seventh grade to get treatment.

30kg of heroin discovered entering Vietnam

Police in the central provinces of Ha Tinh and Nghe An on December 28 uncovered the illegal transport of 58 heroin bars weighing 30 kilos from Laos to Vietnam.

They arrested Tran Van Luu, who was transporting the heroin, in Ha Tinh province when he fled the bus he was travelling on.

Luu, from Nga Son, Thanh Hoa province, was born in 1988.

The case will continue with further investigations.

Software copyright blitz tipped

Next year, inspections on software copyright violations would be increased and violators would get stricter punishments, said Pham Xuan Phuc, deputy chief inspector of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

This year, the ministry's inspectors conducted unscheduled inspections on nearly 3,900 computers belonging to 87 enterprises. Most of the inspected companies were using pirated software; the violators had to pay a total fine of VND1.58 billion (US$75,000).

Notably, 80 per cent of the violators were foreign firms, Phuc said.

Most recently, the ministry inspection agency, co-operating with the Ministry of Public Security's High-tech Crime Control Police Bureau, detected four major foreign-invested companies in HCM City and southern Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces using 561 copies of software programmes for which they had not purchased the copyright.

Microsoft Windows, LacViet MTD dictionary, Adobe Acrobat and AutoCAD were the most commonly pirated software programmes.

The value of the pirated software was estimated at nearly VND4 billion ($190,500), he said.

Large-scale enterprises with strong financial capacity that nevertheless tried to avoid paying for legally licensed software should be punished most heavily, inspector Phuc said.

Vu Manh Chu, former head of the Copyright Office of Viet Nam, said illegal software use should be subject to criminal charges. According to the Law on Intellectual Property, copyright owners could initiate legal proceedings against violators and seek compensation for damages caused by the piracy.

Enterprises licensed to export goods to international markets would also be banned from exporting to those countries.
The battle against copyright infringement also required software producers to co-operate with relevant authorities in making businesses aware of copyright regulations, Phuc said.

Japanese firms all abided by copyright laws, showing that they were well-informed.

Lam Dong meets annual jobs target

The Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province of Lam Dong has provided jobs for 28,500 labourers as of this month, meeting 95 per cent of this year's planned target.

Of the figure, 580 people went abroad to work as guest workers, according to the province's Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Truong Ngoc Ly, the department director, noted that this year a high number of people with tertiary degrees could not find jobs because supply exceeded demand. However, the market continues to need more technical workers and employees with high school degrees, but there is a shortage of applications for these kind of jobs.

"There has been no year like this year. Employers have found it difficult to find enough technical workers while having too many applications for jobs that require higher skills," he said.

This year, businesses in the province tried to recruit a total of 543 technical workers, but only 342 employees applied for the jobs, according to the province's Job Services Centre.

At least 3,000 people with university degrees have applied for jobs, but employers have only needed 90 employees with a university degree, according to the centre.

This year, there were also 952 people with college degrees seeking jobs, but only 69 positions in the province were recruited.

Ly predicted that next year there would be a shortage of technical workers and a surplus of college- and university-educated people looking for jobs.

In addition, many employees will continue to lose their jobs because companies in the province were continuing to cut back production.

As for guest workers, many of them have to take out loans to pay for their labour-export contract fees and are thus reluctant to apply for jobs in countries where the salaries are not very high.

However, in countries like Japan, where salaries are higher, job applicants often do not meet the requirements, including foreign-language skills, to work in these markets.

Ha Noi spends on improving rural areas

Ha Noi has spent about VND8.5 trillion (US$407 million) on its programme for building new rural areas.

The programme has allowed 30 per cent of the city's rural health-care centres to meet national standards, 86 per cent of people living in rural areas to have access to clean water and 135,000 of rural workers to find jobs.

However, the programme has had some shortcomings, including a lack of infrastructure and unsustainable small-scale agricultural production initiatives.

The programme was launched in 2011 under the National Target Programme on building new rural areas 2010-20.

Cambodia, Vietnam host conference on military medicine

The Royal Cambodian Army’s Preah Ket Mealea hospital under and the Vietnam People’s Army’s 175 hospital held a joint conference on military medicine in Phnom Penh on December 28.

The event attracted 200 medical experts representing the two hospitals, a delegation from China’s People’s Liberation Army, and some additional Cambodian military medical units.

Participants presented 10 scientific reports on nasal and gallbladder endoscopies, stroke treatments, coronary artery diseases, peripheral vascular disease, kidney stones, hernias, diabetes, acute pancreatitis, and heart operations.

Preah Ket Mealea hospital Director Lu Sovann and 175 hospital Deputy Director Nguyen Hong Son praised the effective cooperation and the close relationship between the two countries’ leading military units.

They expressed hope both hospitals will continue to collaborate on improving soldiers’ health and strengthening ties between the two armies.

VNN/VOV/VNS