Population growth in the 2001-2010 period dropped to 1.2 percent, the lowest in fifty years, said Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Ba Thuy.

Speaking at a conference in Quang Ninh province on Nov. 27 to review the work of population and family planning, Deputy Minister Thuy said that the network to provide reproductive health care services has been extended widely to the grassroots level, which has helped improve the quality of the Vietnamese population.

This can be seen in the percentages of fatalities among pregnant women and children under one year of age, which gone down considerably in the 2000-2008 period, Thuy added.

However, he also warned that the country is expected to face many difficulties in the coming time including high population density, gender inequality and low population quality.

Participants to the conference also dealt with some challenges in the work of population and family planning including the shortage of skilled labourers and a rise in the ratio of those with mental and physical deficits. Meanwhile, Vietnam ’s Human Development Index remains at the average level among the world’s countries, and ranks 116/174 on the average life-span for a strong person./.