Women's health and health care in Vietnam (original) (raw)

2018, Health care for women international

Women made up more than half of the Vietnam's population (nearly 47 million or 50.7% of the total population in 2016). The number of female employees in Vietnam in 2016 was 26.4 million accounting for 48.4% of the country's workforce (Vietnam General Statistics Office, 2017). Women's health and health care in Vietnam have been significantly improved over time. Maternal mortality in Vietnam has decreased from 233 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 69 per 100,000 live births in 2009, and then again to approximately 50 per 100,000 live births in 2015 (Inter-Agency Group, 2015). Life expectancy at birth of Vietnamese women reached 76.1 years in 2016, higher than that of men (70.8 years) (Vietnam General Statistics Office, 2017). The improvement in health indicators for women has been impressive, but there still exist inequities in women's health and health care in Vietnam (United Nations Development Programme). To tackle the inequity problems, a deep understanding of the current situation of women's health and health care in Vietnam is needed by policy makers, social and health practitioners as well as by the public. The findings from this set of authors provide further insights into today's women and health care issues in Vietnam. Chuong et al., based on the analyses of data from the Vietnam Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2000, 2006, 2011, and 2014, found that the coverage of antenatal and skilled birth attendance both increased over time in Vietnam. However, improvements in antenatal care and skilled birth attendance in Vietnam have been uneven across different segments of the population, and the degrees of inequity are likely to increase (Chuong et al., 2018). Inequity in health service utilization was also discovered from a study by Hanh et al., which showed that about 28.2% of the migrants having sex had not used any contraceptive method. Contraceptive use was significantly associated with age, education, private companies, and income (Hanh, Tuan, Anh, Ha, & Anh, 2018). Many women in Vietnam are still suffering from communicable diseases, especially reproductive tract problems and HIV/AIDS. Le et al. revealed that about