Vietnam is one of the countries that have gained achievements in fighting malaria, Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan said.

At a meeting to review the country’s malaria and parasitic worm prevention programme in the 2006-2010 period and implement the plan for 2011, in Hanoi on March 31, Deputy Minister Huan said that Vietnam reported 21 fatalities from malaria in 2010, down 48.7 percent compared to 2006.

In the 2006-2010 period, 59 cities and provinces reported no malaria outbreaks and 39 cities and provinces confirmed no deaths, Huan said.

The Deputy Minister asked health staff at all levels to propose new measures in an attempt to complete eliminate malaria and applying information technology in detecting and managing outbreaks.

In 2011, the Health Ministry plans to strengthen health activities in villages, promote education campaigns to raise awareness of malaria prevention measures and try to reduce the malaria infection rate to under 0.55 per 1,000 people and fatality rate to under 0.02 per 100,000 people, Huan said.

Regarding parasitic worm control, Huan said that Vietnam received positive support from the World Health Organisation and Asian Development Bank.

Thanks to the support, the National Institute for Malaria, Parasite and Entomology successfully applied a programme to worm children from 2-11 years old and women between 15-45 years old, and a project for infectious disease prevention in the Mekong subregion in 15 provinces and cities.

The Health Ministry will try to eliminate the parasitic disease filariasis by 2015./.