The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will continue to assist Vietnam in population works and reproductive health in 2011.

Director of UNFPA Asia and the Pacific Regional Office Nobuko Horibe had a working session with Vietnamese Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Ba Thuy in Hanoi on May 9.

Nobuko Horibe praised Vietnam ’s achievements in the population field over the past 10 years and expressed her hope that UNFPA and the Health Ministry of Vietnam would boost cooperation in new programmes on population and reproductive health.

Deputy Minister Thuy briefed the UNFPA official about the implementation of national programmes on population and reproductive health, sexual health and HIV in the UN plan and the strategy for 2011-2020.

He said that Vietnam needed to address regional population issues, accelerate the dissemination of education on sexual health and reproductive health for juvenile and unmarried persons, as well as address the model of gender imbalance and improve health care for the elderly.

Arriving in Vietnam in 1977, UNFPA has provided Vietnam with about 140 million USD of assistance.

In the 2006-2010 period, UNFPA helped Vietnam to implement policies and programmes on population and development and improve the quality of people’s lives through increasing access to reproductive health services./.