About 970,000 people living just above the poverty line in the Mekong Delta region, will be provided with health insurance from now to the end of 2009.

The insurance fee was paid partly thanks to money raised by the “Compassionate Arms” Fund at a ceremony earlier this month.

At a press briefing on June 29, the fund’s president Tran Thi Trung Chien announced that on June 2, the fund received over 30 billion VND (1.6 million USD) from enterprises, which covered 20 percent of the cost of health insurance. The remainder of the insurance expenditure was supplied by the State budget and a medical assistance project in the Mekong Delta.

Chien added that the 13 Mekong Delta provinces should plan to raise funds to buy health insurance for people near the poverty line in following years in order to reach the target of all people having health insurance by 2014.-Enditem