A “Nutrition and Development” week, carrying the message of ensuring nutrition security and food safety for public health, will be launched by the Ministry of Health from October 16-23.

The campaign is part of the ministry’s effort to realise the goals of the National Strategy on Nutrition in the 2011-2020 period and respond to the World Food Day (October 16).

A series of activities will be hosted during the event encouraging and teaching people how to eat more nutritious food and process food in the right way to preserve nutrition.

The public health departments in cities and provinces nationwide will coordinate with related agencies to popularise knowledge on gardening and husbandry as well as daily nutrition among families, especially those in remote and natural disaster-prone areas.

According to the Nutrition Institute under the Ministry of Health, Vietnam currently has around 7.68 million children under 5, of whom over 2 million are undersized and over 1 million are underweight due to malnourishment.

At the same time, the number of overweighed children in this age group is increasing fast, now accounting for 5.6 percent of the total.

The average height of Vietnamese men in the 20-24 age group is 164.44 cm while that of women in the same age group is 153.42cm.-VNA