Vietnam seeks help expanding voluntary surgical contraception

Recent surveys by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health suggest that 60% of married women desire no more children. Yet only 2% of currently married women and less than 1/2 of 1% of their partners use sterilization. Underscoring the high unmet need for effective family planning, over 1 million abortions (legal in Vietnam for the past 20 years) are performed annually. This rate corresponds to 1 abortion for every live birth. The Ministry of Health has recently welcomed a variety of organizations, including AVSC, whose assistance can help expand the country's family planning programs. Sorely lacking in supplies, equipment, and trained personnel, Vietnam has merited priority status--2nd only to China and India--from the UNFPA, which has committed $36 million over the next 4 years. Other organizations currently working in Vietnam include the Population Council, the Population Crisis Committee, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Despite enormous casualties during the war years, and a decrease since the 1970s in average family size from 6 to 4 children, the population of Vietnam has continued to grow rapidly, far outpacing economic growth. Currently 67 million, the population is expected to reach 80 million by the year 2000. The average Vietnamese annual income is only $195, among the lowest in the world. Doi moi, the process of economic reform begun in 1986, coupled with new government incentives for families who have no more than 2 children, is changing the face of family planning in Vietnam. Newly opened pharmacies sell imported birth control pills and condoms (to those who can afford them), while government hospitals and health clinics provide mainly IUDs, in addition to limited supplies of pills and condoms. Throughout the country, some 8000 community-level health centers are staffed by nurse-midwives trained in family planning. Voluntary sterilization is available at the district, provincial, and national hospitals. All married women may obtain family planning services free on request. Vietnam's system of free and universal primary health care, combined with high female literacy rates, has kept the country's infant mortality rate low in comparison to other very poor countries. 39% of currently married Vietnamese women ages 15-49 use contraception. Of those, 85% use the IUD, making it far and away the most widely used modern method. In fact, some women think family planning is synonymous with the IUD.