UNICEF Launches Campaign in Vietnam to Stop Preventable Child Deaths

UNICEF has launched a campaign called ZEROworkplace community to call on local companies to join the campaign in an effort to eradicate preventable deaths among children in Vietnam, where 100 children die every day from preventable causes. “UNICEF believes this number should be zero,” said Youssouf Abdel-Jelil, UNICEF's representative in Vietnam, said at the launching ceremony in HCM City on Nov 10. This is part of UNICEF’s global campaign Believe in Zero kicked off last October and aimed at reducing the number of preventable child deaths including traffic accidents, drowning and malnutrition to zero. Pouyuen and Mobivi are the first two companies in Vietnam that have joined the campaign, which aims to enable managers to provide critical information to employees in an inexpensive and effective way that can have a lifesaving impact on their children. The two can promote positive behaviors that have the potential to reach half a million employees, most of them female migrants, according to a UNICEF press release. As a first step to joining the campaign, Pouyuen is promoting the measles-rubella immunization campaign that was launched by the Ministry of Health nationwide on Oct 11 to vaccinate 23 million children aged between one and 14, including 1.3 million in HCM City, by next February. Using an online toolkit to print materials, the company is calling on its workers to get their children vaccinated against the two diseases. The toolkit is the first in a series of information packages that will be accessible online through ZEROworkplace. Mr. Abdel-Jelil said that vaccinations are the most effective and low-cost way to prevent diseases and ultimately save children’s lives. Statistics from the Ministry of Health showed that 4.8 million children in 58 out of 63 cities and provinces nationwide received free measles and rubella shots in the first phase of the three-phase vaccination campaign. (Tuoi Tre - Youth Nov 11, VOV Nov 11)