No banned antibiotics in red tilapia fish

Red tilapia bred in Dong Thap Province are not contaminated by triflyralin, a banned antibiotic, according to authorities.

Fish breeders in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces, especially in Dong Thap, were concerned about rumours about illegal antibiotic usage, said the director of the Dong Thap Department of Fisheries, Le Hoang Vu.

Provincial agencies had closely monitored fish-breeding households for proper feed, medicine and environmental treatment systems and had not found any banned substances, Vu said.

Russian institute honours VN professor

Prof. Dao Trong Thi, President of the Vietnam-Russia Friendship Association, has been appointed honorary professor of the Moscow Academy of Economics and Law (AEPM).

Prof. Thi, who is also member of the National Assembly Standing Committee and Chairman of the Committee for Culture, Education and Young People, received the honour in recognition of his contributions to the development of cooperation in education and training between Vietnam and Russia.
A decoration ceremony was held in Moscow on Apr. 25.

Earlier, Prof. Thi gave a lecture to AEPM students of the institute on Vietnam ’s education, past and present.

Ordnance clearance needs more support

Deputy head of the Army's Engineering Command Phan Duc Tuan expressed hope for assistance in training Vietnamese experts to clear mines and bombs during a working session with a delegation of foreign military attaches in Viet Nam yesterday.

Head of the delegation, French Defence Attche Didier Oustric, affirmed that they would find ways to support Viet Nam and called upon governments and international organisations to continue providing effective assistance to deal with this issue.

All 63 provinces and cities of Viet Nam are still contaminated by explosive remnants of war with a total affected area of 66,000sq.km, equivalent to 20.12 per cent of the country's total area.

An estimated 800,000 tonnes of explosives remain in Viet Nam at present, mainly in the six central provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue and Quang Ngai.

At the current pace of work, it would take Viet Nam around US$10 billion and more than 100 years to clear all bombs, mines and other types of unexploded ordnance left by wars.

Bodies of coal mine victims recovered

After one day of search, rescuers have found the bodies of two people who were killed in the collapse of an illegal coal mining site in central Quang Nam Province on Tuesday, authorities reported.

The bodies were found under the rubble of the collapsed mine in Dai Hong Hamlet, Dai Loc District at 5:20 pm yesterday, rescuers said.

The victims were Bui Thi Sang, a 18-year-old female worker, and Bui Duc Vuong, a 17-year-old male, both of Hoa Binh Province.

The two were among the miners hired by a local man, Nguyen Binh Vuong, 52, to work on the illegal mining site, part of the Ngoc Kinh coal mine, said deputy chairman of the district People’s Committee, Phan Duc Tinh.

The incident occurred at 8 pm on April 24 when the mining site suddenly collapsed because of a large rockslide from the mountain nearby, Tinh said.

The accident also seriously injured another worker, Quach Cong Ta, also of Hoa Binh Province.

Tran Thanh Tam, head of Dai Loc District’s Dai Hong Commune Police, where Nguyen Binh Vuong lives, said the man had hired a number of workers from northern provinces to work at his mining site.

The police have been questioning Vuong about his illegal mining activities.

Luxembourg project helps women, children

Nearly 8 million women and children benefited from a US$5.9 million project of the Ministry of Health's Expanded Programme for Immunisation (EPI) that ended recently.

The Luxembourg ODA-funded project aimed to improve EPI's ability to manage and use cold chain equipment to ensure immunisation service quality in more than 6,000 communes nationwide, especially mountainous and remote areas. The five-year project provided nearly 1,000 freezers and 1,000 cold boxes to all the 63 provinces and cities.

EC aid comes to VN street children

A European Commission-funded project has helped over 800 children who were at risk of remaining homeless in Vietnam have a stable life and nearly 600 street children have been returned to their families.

The results were announced at a conference held by the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) in Hai Phong City on April 26.

At the conference, which aimed to review the results of the project’s 2009-2011 second phase, MOLISA reported that through the project, close to 2,000 street children were provided with vocational training and jobs with stable monthly incomes of between VND800,000 and VND2 million.

Around 7,000 children were given money to cover school fees and buy uniforms, learning devices and bicycles, while 6,700 others were provided with medicine or health insurance.

The VND50 billion project was carried out in 51 communes in 10 provinces and cities nationwide.

WHO issues new HIV guidelines

The World Health Organisation has released guidelines for couples for HIV testing and counselling for HIV-serodiscordant couples, i.e., those in which only one partner is HIV-postive.

The guidelines also recommend that, among serodiscordant couples, anti-retroviral therapy should be provided to the person living with HIV to prevent infection of his or her partner.

"Viet Nam should consider revisions to the treatment eligibility criteria for serodiscordant couples in line with new global guidelines," said UNAIDS Viet Nam Country Director Eamonn Murphy.

VNN/VNS/Tuoi Tre