A nurse tends to a newborn baby at the Children's Hospital No. 2 in Ho Chi Minh City

Hosted by the Ministry of Health, the event aims to review the population and family planning work in 2019, and set out key tasks for 2020, including the implementation of the Vietnam Population Strategy through 2030.

Reports presented at the event showed that a number of documents, regulations and guidelines on the implementation of the population work were issued late and asynchronously, while funding for communications campaigns – a crucial solution to the work – has reduced, greatly affecting the sector’s performance.

By April 1, 2019, Vietnam had a total population of over 96.2 million people, up 1.5 million compared to a year earlier. The crude birth rate was 16.3 percent, up 1.7 percent against 2018. The newborn screening rate rose by 2 percent compared to 2018 to reach 40 percent, but failing to meet the goal of 70 percent set for 2019.

Thanks to efforts of the sector at all levels, a number of basic targets of the 2019 plan were satisfied.

The replacement fertility was maintained at 2.09 children per woman, while the sex ratio at birth was controlled at 111.5 boys per 100 girls. The rate of couples accepting to use modern contraception reached 70.8 percent, 2.8 percent higher than the target. The number of women receiving screening during pregnancy stood at 56.43 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of elderly people receiving health checkups at least once a year reached 20 percent, exceeding the target of 10 percent.

In 2020, the sector aims to firmly maintain the replacement fertility, reduce fertility disparities across regions, and bring the sex ratio at birth to the natural equilibrium, and improve the quality of population and health care for the elderly.

Attention will paid to building legal documents on the population and family planning work, while promoting communication campaigns to raise public awareness of the work, and the implementation of models and measures to improve the quality and structure of population.

Vietnam’s population is forecast to reach 97.3 million people in 2020, with the total of birth rate standing at 2.1 percent, and the sex ratio at birth at  111.3 boys per 100 girls. VNA