Hanoi (VNA) – Hanoi ha൩s effectively implemented reproductive health care programmes over the past few years, according to Vu Thi Thanh Huong, director of the city’s Reproductive Health Care Centre.

The programmes have helped ensure pregnancy management for 99.7 percent of pregnant women, and provided health care to nearly all mothers and newborn babies, thus reducing the infant mortality rate, she said. Experts and officials from the centre collaborated with maternity hospitals to provide training courses to district and communal health workers. They have supplied practical lectures to raise the health workers’ knowledge of obstetrical diagnoses and emergency aid. The centre also organised examinations and medical check-ups for hundreds of thousands of women, helping them detect problems related to sexually transmitted diseases, and uterus and breast cancers. A number of birth-control and family planning services were also launched. Last year, about 5,300 men received medical consultations and treatment at the clinics. Reproductive and sexual education lessons were given to nearly 6,200 students at high schools and secondary schools in the city. In order to improve family planning services and reproductive health care, district-level medical facilities should be provided with national-standard equipment, Huong said. Education should be strengthened to raise public awareness about reproductive health care, she added. The reproductive health care programmes also needed to focus more on the elderly, males, adolescents and students.-VNA