Dissemination of gender equality information remains the most important tool to minimising the gender imbalance and soaring growth of the population, according to the director of the Population and Family Planning General Department Nguyen Ba Thuy.

At least 200 million women want to use safe and effective family planning methods, but are unable to do so because they lack access to information and services or the support of their husbands and communities. And more than 50 million of the 190 million women who become pregnant each year have abortions. Many of these are clandestine and performed under unsafe conditions.

Health authorities in 28 coastal cities and provinces will set up mobile teams by the end of next month to spread knowledge on prenatal and paediatric health care.

In a crisis or refugee situation, one in five women of childbearing age is likely to be pregnant. Conflicts and natural disasters put these women and their babies at risk because of the sudden loss of medical support, compounded in many cases by trauma, malnutrition or disease, and exposure to violence. UNFPA seeks to make motherhood as safe as possible during crisis situations by helping those who want to delay or avoid pregnancy and by providing care before, during and after delivery.

(CPV)- Vietnam has around 2 million newborns each year; 3,000 of them are born by HIV-infected mothers, according to statistics from the Vietnam Administration of AIDS Control (VAAC), under the Ministry of Health (MOH).