When my twin daughters were born just over five years ago, both required expert medical care immediately following their birth. In the lead-up to their arrival, I had also needed ongoing specialist attention during what was, for various reasons, considered a high-risk pregnancy. From the bottom of my heart, I will always be grateful for the exceptional health care my babies and I received during my pregnancy and my daughters’ first hours, days and weeks – helping to give them the healthiest possible start to life that every baby deserves, and every parent wishes for.
In Viet Nam and around the world, huge strides have been made in recent years to improve health outcomes for pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. But unfortunately, not every pregnant woman, new mother and infant receives the kind of care that my family did – and this needs to change.
On 7 April each year, WHO celebrates World Health Day – the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948 – as a day to celebrate progress towards better health, as well as to highlight the need for more effort in some areas.
This year, the global World Health Day theme of ‘Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures’ is about the importance of renewed investment in and focus on quality health care for mothers and babies around the world. Investing in newborn and maternal health is not just the right thing to do, it also makes economic sense. In low- and middle-income countries, every US$ 1 invested in maternal and newborn health can yield a return of up to US$ 20.
Today, a baby born in Viet Nam has a much greater chance of surviving its first four weeks of life than ever before. In 2000, 15 babies were dying for every 1000 live births; by 2022, the rate had decreased by one-third to 10 deaths.
It is a similar picture for their mothers. According to new figures released this week by WHO, the number of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth in Viet Nam is estimated to have nearly halved in recent decades, from 83 women dying for every 100,000 babies born in the year 2000, to 48 deaths for every 100,000 babies born in 2023.
This impressive progress is due to better health care especially at grassroots level, childhood vaccination, and dramatic improvements in nutrition, water and sanitation. It is also thanks to the strong leadership and commitment of the Government, the guidance of the Ministry of Health, the expertise and dedication of health-care workers at every level, close collaboration with other agencies and support from international organizations.
Through our work with health authorities to develop national policies and guidelines on reproductive health and the care of newborns, design and deliver training for health staff, and devise strategies to improve the quality of care that mothers and their babies receive, WHO is immensely proud to have been a partner in these efforts.
50 years of improving health
Beyond child and maternal health, WHO’s work in Viet Nam spans a broad range of health issues. Our aim is to help the people of Viet Nam enjoy better health, and to help the Government to achieve the health-related Sustainable Development Goals – as part of its own aspirations for the country’s future development. We have now been proudly working in Viet Nam for almost 50 years.
For example, since 1981, when Viet Nam introduced the national immunization programme, WHO has worked alongside Government colleagues and other partners to help ensure every child, everywhere in Viet Nam is protected from vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and Japanese encephalitis. Since then, Viet Nam has eradicated smallpox, eliminated neonatal tetanus and been declared by WHO as a polio-free country.
In recent years, Viet Nam’s commendably high childhood vaccination rates fell as a result of pandemic disruptions to immunization services, as well as challenges with vaccine supplies. Through training health-care workers, donating vaccines, advising on vaccination strategies and supplying critical equipment such as vaccine refrigerators, WHO has been proud to support efforts to help restore the protection of children through vaccination, even in the most remote areas – and including during the recent challenges posed by a very large-scale measles outbreak.
Viet Nam has also made real progress in reducing injuries, disability and deaths from road traffic crashes in the last decade. WHO has supported these efforts through assistance in the development of laws on helmets for motorcyclists, and more recently, legislation requiring children to sit in the backseat and be secured in child safety restraints while travelling in cars – all measures proven to reduce injuries and save lives. To reduce the risk of drowning, we have worked with the Government and partners to develop technical and practical guidance on drowning prevention, build the capacity of provinces to run classes on swimming and water safety, and implement public awareness campaigns on child drowning prevention.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO was honoured to be a trusted partner in providing technical support to the Government’s strong efforts to protect health, society and the economy, and in offering emergency assistance, such as in the procurement and delivery of needed equipment, vaccines and treatment supplies. Lessons from the pandemic experience are also informing ongoing work to strengthen health security systems, including pandemic preparedness and response, for the future.
Health emergencies can also take the form of natural disasters, as we saw last year during Typhoon Yagi – which damaged more than 800 health- care facilities. To contribute to the response efforts, WHO joined assessment teams to understand the extent of health needs, helped monitor and prevent disease outbreaks, donated water purification tablets and containers to health-care centres and families, and arranged health messages to be broadcast via community loudspeaker in several ethnic minority languages, helping to provide the information that people needed to keep themselves and their families safe.
Extreme weather events like Typhoon Yagi are, unfortunately, likely to become more frequent in the future with the rapid pace of climate change. To help the health sector adapt to the changing climate, WHO works with the Government to strengthen the climate resilience and environmental sustainability of health-care facilities . This work is helping hospitals around the country to continue serving their local communities safely despite the challenges posed by unpredictable weather and climate change.
In all of these efforts to deliver better health and health services for the people of Viet Nam, we are incredibly grateful for the support of national and international donors and partners, community-based organizations, philanthropic foundations, academic institutions, and our UN sister agencies. As the famous saying goes, alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.
Looking to the future, collaborating to tackle remaining gaps
Despite huge progress – health gaps remain, and there is always more to do. Newborns and mothers, for instance, still suffer higher death rates in remote disadvantaged areas, where families struggle to access quality maternal health-care services.
Different, but equally important, challenges still exist in other important areas of health.
For example, in Viet Nam today more than 80% of the ‘disease burden’, is caused by non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung and cardiovascular diseases. Yet too many people suffering from these conditions cannot access the services they need to have their conditions diagnosed and treated. We can change this by improving grassroots health care, as well as further strengthening social health insurance – including to reduce patient out-of pocket costs for health-care services. We can also do a lot more to reduce the risk factors for NCDs – like smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, poor nutrition and lack of physical activity.
And too often, people with, or at risk of illnesses like tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis, are missing out on screening and treatment. By making prevention, screening, and treatment services more accessible, we can help turn the tide on infectious diseases that are still making people in Viet Nam sick, and in doing so, making life harder than it should be for those individuals, their families and communities.
Improving health for mothers and babies; ensuring kids are vaccinated; fighting infectious diseases; protecting children from road crashes and drowning; tackling the health risks of climate change; helping people to quit smoking, drink less, move more and live healthier; improving basic health services and bringing them close to where people live; and preparing for and responding to health emergencies – this is the core work of WHO.
WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros often says: “A healthy person prays for many things: money, success, happiness. But a sick person just prays or wishes for one thing: to have good health.”
This World Health Day, as we proudly continue our work alongside the Government in its efforts to deliver better health and create more hopeful futures, WHO has the same simple wish for pregnant women, for newborn babies, and indeed, for every person in Viet Nam: good health, for all.