Experts urge for fairer health system in Vietnam
Experts from the Vietnam
Partnership for Actions in Health Equity (PAHE) agreed that to move
towards universal health coverage, the priority intervention should be
focused on the expansion of health insurance targeting other
disadvantaged people beyond just the poor alone, to include children,
ethnic minority people, and near-poor workers and farmers.
Additionally, the country should improve the quality of health care
services which are needed by every person, with particular attention
given to closing the gap for disadvantaged groups such as women and
those living in rural areas.
Integrated interventions should be
applied with participation from different sectors, including women's
empowerment, education, rural development and income generating
activities.
The recommendations were revealed after PAHE
completed its second Vietnam Health Watch Report (VHWR), which provides
an assessment of the patterns and magnitudes of the health equity
situation in the country. The first report was completed in late 2011
providing an overview of the country's situation.
The second
VHWR analyses the data from several recent national representative
population-based surveys such as the Vietnam Living Standard Survey 2008
and 2010, the Global Adult Tobacco Use Surveys 2010 and the Survey
Assessment of Vietnamese Youth 2010.
The analysis showed that
there still exist socio-economic inequities in different aspects of
health at different degrees, including inequity by gender, age,
education, ethnicity, economic status and place of residence.
According to the research, the age of older mothers, mothers with low
education levels, those from ethnic minorities and those with lower
living standards and living in rural areas create a higher risk of child
mortality.
Only one child died out of the more than 1,600 born
by mothers aged between 15-19 years old, whereas 229 children died out
of those children born by women aged between 45-49. The research also
revealed that women of these groups have less access to obstetric care.
More than 60 percent of the women from ethnic minorities
deliver their babies at medical stations, whereas the rate for women in
Kinh group is nearly 99 percent.
PAHE is a group of Vietnamese
experts and researchers from non-governmental organisations, including
the Institute for Social Development Studies, the Centre for Creative
Initiative in Health and Population and the Hanoi Medical University.-VNA