Vietnam is calling for greater awareness about contraception and safe sex as it is seeing nearly 300,000 abortions a year according to a survey by the Ministry of Health.
The numbers were announced by Nguyen Doan Tu, head of the General Office for Population and Family Planning, at the conference about benefits in contraception in response to World Contraception Day on September 26.
Nguyen Doan Tu, head of the General Office for Population and Family Planning speaks at the conference on September 26
Contraceptive methods bring in three main benefits including taking initiative in when to have children, avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and help promote better family lives.
According to last year report, 24 out of 1,000 pregnant cases and 15 out of 1,000 abortion cases are from teenage mothers. A survey about population change and family planning in April 2016 show that 62 out of 100 abortion cases for married women, aged 15-49, were unwanted pregnancies.
Multiple abortions, and the infertility rate, especially secondary infertility rate are on the rise. Reproductive health care services are also lacking.
"We must make sure that access to all contraceptive methods must be easy and the prices must be reasonable for all people, especially to ethnic minority groups and people in rural and remote areas," Tu said.
Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai, head of the Vietnam Women's Union's Family and Society Division agreed and said that the union would work with the education sector to integrate lessons about population and reproductive health into the curriculum.
