The Health Department of the northern mountainous province of Thai Nguyen held a workshop on September 18 to build a nutrition programme for 2014 in a bid to minimise children’s malnutrition.
The event is part of the Alive & Thrive (A & T) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The project has helped Thai Nguyen open nearly 40 consultative offices which give advice on caring and raising children to expectant and nursing mothers and their families.
At the workshop, delegates from relevant agencies, health care centres and hospitals across the province lauded the project’s outcomes but noted that children in the locality still face risks of malnutrition. The rate of underweight children in the under-five group is 19.6 percent.
They pointed to the fact that 76 percent of the province’s population works in agriculture and women are usually breadwinners in the families, so mothers have little time to care for their children. Only 52.3 percent of local children benefit from exclusive breast-feeding in the first six months of their life.
To improve this situation, the province is set to intensify educational campaigns on nutrition in community, launch a “preventive nutrition strategy” targeting pregnant women and provide seriously malnourished children with nutritious products.
Thai Nguyen set the target that by 2014, 90 percent of local mothers will have sufficient knowledge on nutrition for small children, 60 percent of infants will be breastfed exclusively in the first six months after birth, and 95 percent of under-24-month children will receive medical checks-up every three months.-VNA
The event is part of the Alive & Thrive (A & T) project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The project has helped Thai Nguyen open nearly 40 consultative offices which give advice on caring and raising children to expectant and nursing mothers and their families.
At the workshop, delegates from relevant agencies, health care centres and hospitals across the province lauded the project’s outcomes but noted that children in the locality still face risks of malnutrition. The rate of underweight children in the under-five group is 19.6 percent.
They pointed to the fact that 76 percent of the province’s population works in agriculture and women are usually breadwinners in the families, so mothers have little time to care for their children. Only 52.3 percent of local children benefit from exclusive breast-feeding in the first six months of their life.
To improve this situation, the province is set to intensify educational campaigns on nutrition in community, launch a “preventive nutrition strategy” targeting pregnant women and provide seriously malnourished children with nutritious products.
Thai Nguyen set the target that by 2014, 90 percent of local mothers will have sufficient knowledge on nutrition for small children, 60 percent of infants will be breastfed exclusively in the first six months after birth, and 95 percent of under-24-month children will receive medical checks-up every three months.-VNA
