Vietnam Tightens Control over Prenatal Gender Selection amid Sex Imbalance

Vietnam’s Ministry of Health has launched a campaign to tighten control over prenatal gender selection in an effort to cope with worse sex imbalance, state media reported Monday [Oct 19]. A campaign has been jointly launched by the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam. Called “No Sex Discrimination or Fetus Gender Selection”, the campaign was kick-started last weekend under the support by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with an aim to step up attempts to avert people’s selection of fetus gender and sex imbalance at birth. The move is expected to raise people’s awareness of illegal prenatal gender selection and consequences caused by sex imbalance. Pham Le Tuan, deputy minister of Health, said that Vietnam’s sex ratio at birth of baby boys over girls was 112.4/100 in 2014. The ministry’s statistics shows that Vietnam has 114 boys per 100 girls or even 130/100 in several parts, compared to the world’s average ratio of 103 to 106 boys per 100 girls. The imbalance was mainly attributed to gender selection in which parents would take abortion to choose preferred gender of their unborn child. Vietnam is estimated to have more than four million of men unmarried by 2050 if the country fails to curb the gender imbalance. The surplus of males of marriageable age may lead to the disintegration of family structures as a significant proportion of men will have to marry late and many cannot get married at all, local experts said. The noted that the century-long male chauvinism has made the situation worse as local couples find it easy to access different ways for sex selection. Ritsu Nacken, a UNFPA representative, said that Vietnam needs urgent and concerted efforts by competent agencies, families, schools, and the entire community instead of focusing solely on banning prenatal ultrasound tests or gender-based abortion. (Tuoi Tre – Youth Oct 19, An Ninh Thu Do – Capital Security Oct 19 p7)