Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc appreciated the United Nations’ assistance for Vietnam in implementing Millennium Development Goals, particularly those related to nutrition and health while receiving UN Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement Gerda Verburg on January 31.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) welcomes UN Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement Gerda Verburg

PM Phuc affirmed that the Vietnamese Party and State always pay special attention to nutrition-related issues to improve stature, fitness and intelligence of Vietnamese people, thus helping increase the quality of human resources.

Gerda Verburg, who is also Assistant to the UN Secretary-General, spoke highly of the fact that the Communist Party of Vietnam had issued a resolution and the Prime Minister promulgated a decree on nutrition, which show the attention and the vision of the country’s leaders to this issue.

She said that nutrition should be a cross-cutting issue in the Government’s working agenda.

Based on experience of countries in the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, she suggested Vietnam set up a high-level mechanism to help the Health Ministry fulfil its tasks involved in nutrition. The country should also take measures to call for public involvement and mobilise resources from the entire society to help the Government achieve nutrition targets in remote areas.

The government also needs to hold more dialogue with the private sector to receive their support and intensify international cooperation, she added. 

Agreeing with Verburg’s proposals, PM Phuc stated that the Government has carried out a lot of programmes to improve nutrition and physical strength for ethnic minority people, and encourage the participation of the private economic sector in socio-economic development, including in nutrition improvement.

He expressed his hope that the UN will continue providing financial and technical assistance for Vietnam in this field.-VNA