Vietnam is striving to reduce the rate of underweight children to 18% and children with stunted growth to under 30% whilst keeping the number of overweight kids to under 5% in 2010. The targets were set at a recent conference to review child malnutrition prevention work in 2009 and set out tasks for 2010 in the northern port city of Haiphong. To reach these targets, stronger measures need to be taken, especially for pregnant women and children under the age of two, said Professor Le Thi Hop, director of the National Institute of Nutrition. According to the institute’s statistics, the number of underweight children under five fell to 18.9% in 2009, two years ahead of schedule. However, the rate of children with stunted growth remains high with 32.6% last year. There are big differences in the rates of malnourished children between the regions and between urban and rural areas. The Central Highlands leads the country in the number of underweight children with a level of 28.5% while the south-eastern region’s rate is only 16.4%, the lowest in the country. Major cities like Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City report the lowest malnutrition rates of between 5.3-12.6% for children underweight and between 6-23.4% stunted. Meanwhile, the respective rates in Dak Nong, Kon Tum and Lao Cai provinces are 28.4-29.5% and 40.1-41.9%. Chronic malnutrition results in long-term physical defects in children, and causes other problems such as obesity, diabetes and other diseases later in life, said Hop. She added that in the near future, the child malnutrition prevention program will prioritize localities with high malnutrition rates.
