Malnutrition and poverty alleviation in Vietnam during the last period 1985-2000

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Vietnam was classified among the group of poor countries in the world, having a relatively high rate of poverty households. Compared to other developing countries, undernutrition among Vietnamese children is still a serious public health problem. On 16 September 1995 the Government of Vietnam ratified the National Plan of Action for Nutrition (NPAN) for the period 1995-2000. Poverty reduction is one of the basic social policies given special attention. In this regard, the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction programme (HEPR) has been executed by Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs since 1992 with special emphasis on supports for poor communes and poor households. The present paper will begin by looking at the trends of undernutrition and the achievements of poverty reduction in Vietnam over the past decades. For the past few years the HEPR has achieved great outcomes. Vietnam is evaluated by the international community as one of the countries with the best performance in poverty reduction. The gross domestic product per head in 2000 was 1.8-fold against that in 1990. The percentage of hunger and poor households declined rapidly, from approximately 40% in 1985 to nearly 30% in the early 1990s, to 20% in 1995 and 11% in the year 2000. It has been shown that after 5 years of implementation of the NPAN1 (1995-2000), the nutritional status of people in Vietnam has considerably improved and important nutrition goals (including micronutrient deficiencies, food supply etc.) were achieved by the year 2000. It could be concluded that the HEPR and the NPAN in Vietnam during the last decade have been successfully implemented.