Mr. Phu said this at a seminar on reducing poverty among ethnic people in mountain areas, jointly held by the Committee for Ethnic Minorities and the United Nations in Vietnam.

If Vietnam does not have an appropriate strategy for poverty alleviation, it will remain a big problem, especially in mountain areas, said the Minister.

During the seminar, participants focused their discussions on reducing poverty and proposed plans and programmes to be funded by the Government and international organizations to ensure their sustainability.

Vietnam has gained great achievements in reducing poverty over the past years and has been highly praised by the international community. The national poverty rate has reduced from 58 percent in 1993 to 12 percent in 2009 and the poverty rate in mountain areas has fallen from 86 to 31 percent.

The disbursement rate has reached 100 percent of the set plan. The city is striving to supply safe water to nearly 4,000 households by the end of this year, bringing the total number of households having access to the safe water supply in the city to more than 51,500.  

In addition, Can Tho is implementing a World Bank-funded safe water project with a total investment capital of more than VND68 billion.  

The city aims to provide 83 percent of rural households with access safe to water by next year.

The exhibition synthesizes the results of the campaign “Men say no to domestic violence”, shares action for gender equality by men in Hanoi, and encourages men to promote gender equality and prevent violence against women.

“Men say no to domestic violence” is a communication campaign that was carried out by CSAGA in Hanoi from August to the end of October, 2010 and funded by the embassy of Sweden.

The campaign encourages men to appraise and consider traditional gender norms and develop into modern men without violence. The works in the exhibition featured the messages of the campaign.

Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam Staffan Herrstrom said gender equality creates a society where men and women are equal and there is less domestic violence.

The seminar showed that the bird flu has been spread to 23 provinces across the country and over 75,000 sick ducks have been culled since early this year. 

There are several reasons for the large outbreak of the disease, including indifference by the local people and authorities, and weak coordination between agencies dealing with bird flu.

Also, many poultry flocks have not been vaccinated, and the illegal transportation of infected poultry has not been controlled. The small scale of poultry farm also causes the difficulty of the disease prevention and control.

The ceremony was attended by the general secretary of the Vietnam Red Cross Society, Doan Van Thai; a representative from Medentech, Michael Gately; and Tran Thu Ha, a representative of Zuellig Pharma and Phytopharma. 

After the ceremony, staff from the Red Cross Society and representatives from Red Cross chapters in Quang Binh, and Nghe An were trained in using Aquatabs to provide safe water. The volume of Aquatabs tablets received by the Red Cross can purify nearly 40 million litres of water.  

On addition to sponsoring Aquatabs, BKG Water Solution also granted US$6,250 to organize training courses for staff from Red Cross chapters nationwide on using Aquatabs.   

Aquatabs are produced by Medentech-Ireland and have been licensed by the Ministry of Health since 2008. Using water purified by Aquatabs can help people prevent cholera, typhoid and dysentery.

Pact is an international organisation with a US$44.4 million programme funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) under the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Pact has offered grants, technical assistance and capacity building to local partners’ pioneering HIV/AIDS initiatives since 2004.

In 2010, many civil-society groups have benefited from Pact’s 26 training courses on HIV treatments, promoting safer sex and managing finances and data. Pact brings partners together to learn from world-class practices as well as from each other.

From 2007 to 2010, Pact’s Vietnamese partners have raised the number of people they work with via community prevention initiatives from 6,205 to 21,345. Outpatient care for adults living with HIV has risen from 540 to 5,394, out of 21,780 and services for HIV-affected children from 116 to 1,807, out of 7,139.

Since 2007, civil-society groups have submitted 163 projects to Pact’s Local Partnership Initiative. Pact also fine tunes the best proposals and has operated 20 projects nationwide.

At Vietnam’s Innovation Day on HIV/AIDS Control on December 1, the Ministry of Health singled out the Vietnam Community Mobilisation Centre for HIV/AIDS Control (VICOMC, a Pact partner since 2008) for its breakthrough in strengthening grassroots HIV prevention in the northern highlands.

Pact works worldwide to support local solutions in health, the environment and livelihoods. Its current five-year HIV/AIDS program under USAID from 2006 to 2011 marks its first large-scale effort to support Government initiatives in Vietnam.

At a meeting with Lao National Assembly Deputy Chairman Saysomphon Phomvihan on December 2, Vuong briefed the host on results of his working session with the Lao Supreme People’s Procuracy and affirmed that the two agencies should step up the training of human resources in this sector.

Saysomphon insisted that Vietnam further assist Laos in training procurators to strengthen Laos-Vietnam relations.