VN youth lack access to contraception: UN
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More than a third of young Vietnamese still lack access to the contraception they need. As a result, the rates of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions are still high among young women and adolescents.
The information was shared in the State of World Population 2013 report, released on Monday in Hanoi by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in collaboration with the Centre for the Central Youth and Adolescents.
The report, entitled “Motherhood in childhood: facing the challenge of adolescent pregnancy”, places particular emphasis on the girls who are at double risk of maternal death and obstetric fistula when their bodies are not yet ready to bear a child.
In Vietnam, according to the latest national data, the unmet need for contraceptives is still 35.4 per cent amongst young people aged 15-19 and 34.6 per cent of young people aged 20-24 years.
Reports of reproductive health centres in 63 provinces and cities across the country last year showed that the rate of adolescents becoming pregnant made up 3.2 per cent of the total pregnancy rate for women, an increase of 0.1 per cent compared with 2011. Adolescent abortions made up about 5 per cent of the total abortion rate during the past few years, according to the National Hospital for Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Nguyen Duc Vinh, the deputy director of the Ministry of Health’s Maternal and Child Health Department, said that preventing adolescent pregnancy in the country met a lot of obstacles due to the shortage of awareness, knowledge, services and funds.
“Families, schools and the community have not paid enough attention to reproductive healthcare for adolescents,” he said.
The network of reproductive healthcare services is limited in the country, especially in remote mountainous and rural areas. Vinh said the Ministry of Education and Training had been editing a national plan on teaching reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention in education universities, whereas the Ministry of Home Affairs had set up a curriculum on living skills. In the next phase the curriculum will be taught as a compulsory subject at universities.
Vinh called for international organisations to continue giving financial and technical support to the country to help adolescents access the contraceptives they need. He also proposed the National Assembly to amend the Law on Youth by adding regulations on adolescents’ rights and responsibilities in sex and reproductive healthcare.
