The Phu Tho Provincial Health Department and the Sustainable Health Development Centre (VietHealth) has jointly carried out a programme to survey and assess the demand for training communal health workers in Thanh Thuy district of the northern midland province of Phu Tho.

The programme is being carried out in the context that the number of children with disabilities is on the increase, especially in rural and remote areas where people have few chances to get access to fundamental health care services. The shortcoming has resulted in poor results in medical interventions due to late diagnoses in such children.

According to statistics, Vietnam now has more than three percent of children with disabilities and Thanh Thuy is one of districts that are home to the largest number of handicapped children and ethnic people.

The results of the survey will be released at a seminar by Vietnam ’s non-governmental organisation VietHealth and the Phu Tho Provincial Health Department in Viet Tri city on May 21.

Apart from assessing training demand, the survey also aims to improve the healthcare service quality and raise the awareness of the community in regions with difficulties.

“The majority of children with disabilities can be prevented and intervened through early diagnoses during children’s development process, the improvement of maternal healthcare service quality and raising the awareness of risks for disabled children for women at reproductive age,” said VietHealth Director PhD Kieu Anh.

Anh said that the seminar will be a forum for relevant agencies to contribute their opinions to building a training programme for improving communal health workers’ capability in preventing and detecting children’s defects.

According to the Health Ministry’s 2006 report, congenital defects causing children’s deformities in 70.8 percent of children aged between five to nine and 74.9 percent of children aged under four.

A survey jointly conducted by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) revealed that 3.1 percent of Vietnamese children aged under 17 are suffering from a type of deformity and 22 percent of them are suffering from mobility disability and 21 percent, from language disability./.