Priority health concerns
Maternal and child health
Laos battles to reduce malnutrition
Laos needs to improve its health standards and take action against malnutrition with the long term aim of ending hunger in the face of the country’s high rate of poverty. An inception workshop on nutrient gap analysis held on February 6 in Vientiane and attended ...
National meeting reviews dengue control
Health experts from across the country met in Vientiane on January 26 to discuss the interventions undertaken and lessons learnt over the past year in an effort to plan the fight against dengue in 2017. Within the third week of January this year there have been ...
Vientiane dengue fever rates higher this year: authorities
Health authorities in the capital have admitted that the outbreak of dengue fever is higher this year compared to the same period in 2016. From January 1-24 this year, 70 dengue fever infections have been recorded in Vientiane, while in the same period last year ...
Maternity leave: How Vietnam compares to neighbors
The ILO believes Vietnam has fairly progressive policies to protect working mothers. Vietnamese female workers are offered up to 26 weeks maternity leave, above the average level of 12-13 weeks seen in Southeast Asia, according to the International Labor Organization. Vietnam has a system of ...
Four new Zika virus cases in Đồng Nai Province
Four new Zika virus infection cases have been recorded in southern Đồng Nai Province since the end of December, according to the province’s Steering Board for Epidemic Prevention. The cases occurred in Nhơn Trạch District’s Vĩnh Thanh Commune, Bạch Thái Bình, director of the province’s ...
Climate change triggers new diseases in Vietnam
Scientists have found connections between climate change and the appearance of new diseases, especially vector borne diseases, including dengue fever and malaria. Vietnam is among five countries in the world to suffer the most from climate change. According to the Central Steering Committee on Fighting and ...
European Union, CARE support nutrition project in Northern provinces
The European Union and CARE Denmark are providing over 2 million euro to support food and nutrition security projects in Luang Namtha and Phongsaly provinces. The four-year project on promoting agricultural production to improve food and nutrition security through multi-sector coordination were signed by CARE ...
Experts wary of fish to fight dengue
The National Dengue Control Program, a department under the Health Ministry, remains skeptical in the implementation of a new dengue-prevention method, citing concerns about the program’s long-term sustainability.Despite a Malaria Consortium pilot project – which uses guppy fish to eat mosquito larvae to stem the ...
Boom built on ‘slavery’
The use of debt bondage to trap workers in “modern day slavery” is widespread in many of Cambodia’s brick-making factories, indicates research by rights group Licadho, whose findings suggest the Kingdom’s recent building boom is built on the illegal practice. In a report released on ...
Health Ministry blames Pasteur Institute for Zika mistake
After social media users criticised the Ministry of Health for a Zika false alarm over the weekend, the ministry’s Department of Communicable Diseases pointed the finger at the Pasteur Institute for the misinformation. The ministry and the World Health Organization on November 18 issued a ...