'Slow and steady wins the race' - the secret of population officers

Variety of forms

Due to the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, many activities of the Population sector have been postponed and postponed at this time. In particular, March is usually the peak of the communication campaign on population and reproductive health, but currently all activities have slowed down. In that context, to maintain and stabilize population activities, communication and mobilization work is increasingly focused.

Population policy consultation for people of Tan Huong commune (Tan Ky). Photo: My Ha

Coming to Huong Son commune (Tan Ky), following Mr. Dau Van Dinh - a population collaborator and village health worker doing advocacy work, we can see that the work is not easy. Due to the characteristics of Huong Son commune with a large population, including households of ethnic minorities, the awareness of the people in the area has long been limited, the birth rate of the third child or more is still high.

Coming to Ms. Cao Thi Cong's house in Phu Cong hamlet, a young family with 2 sons and a fairly stable economy, Mr. Dinh and his collaborators spent more than 30 minutes to learn about and listen to the family's wishes.

Identifying these cases as often at risk of having more children because the family has the means, the team of collaborators also talked about many contents about implementing population policy and instructions on using contraceptive methods.

Mr. Dau Van Dinh shared: “To effectively propagate, we must base on each object and each different situation. The form of propaganda must be diverse and combined with many organizations to gather and attract many objects to participate. The most important thing to do is to be persistent, like "slow and steady wins the race".

Population counseling at home in Do Luong district. Photo: My Ha

Throughout the province, despite many difficulties, population communication activities are still being implemented quite vigorously, through many different forms, including the use of social networks.

Currently, according to statistics, in addition to the official website of the Provincial Department of Population and Family Planning, 21 districts, cities and towns use their social networking sites to post information and activities of the sector. In parallel, more than 400 communes and towns also have websites to attract people to follow updated news.

For example, in Hoa Hieu ward (Thai Hoa town), although the campaign could not be implemented like in previous years, the ward's population committee still coordinated with the health station and grassroots collaborators to distribute free birth control pills and market new types of condoms... All of this information was also shared on the Facebook page "Hoa Hieu Population", so although it was not organized widely, people still participated and responded enthusiastically.

Ms. Ho Thi Thanh - Director of the Thai Hoa Town Population and Family Planning Center said: "Over the years, in order to effectively implement the set population goals, we have always considered propaganda work as a key task in many diverse and rich forms such as: Coordinating propaganda on the local loudspeaker system, coordinating with departments and branches to disseminate and propagate the policies of the Party and State on population policy or coordinating with secondary and high schools to integrate counseling activities for students in extracurricular activities to help them better understand psychological, physiological, friendship, and love issues of adolescents and young people.

Thanks to propaganda and mobilization, the work of Population - Family Planning in the town has had many positive changes, people are increasingly fully aware and have more and more access to reproductive health care services.

Ms. Ho Thi Thanh - Director of Thai Hoa Town Population and Family Planning Center

Innovation and improvement of communication quality

In recent times, population communication work in Nghe An province has achieved important results in implementing the Party's guidelines and policies and the State's laws on population work.

Communication is also identified as a fundamental solution to achieve the goal of reducing births, reducing the rate of third or more children and contributing to improving population quality through forms such as communication on mass media; communication, advocacy, consultation, and talks on population, health, and reproductive health for the community, with 400-500 sessions being carried out at the grassroots level each year, focusing on hard-to-reach subjects, densely populated areas, and areas with high birth rates.

Population collaborators of Luc Da commune (Con Cuong) encourage families not to have a third child. Photo: Cong Kien

In addition, thanks to the program of signing a cooperation agreement between the Department of Population and 20 provincial departments, branches, sectors and organizations, communication work has been expanded and implemented in a diverse manner with many participants. Since then, thousands of "Families without a third child" clubs, "Male farmers with population work" clubs, "5 no, 3 clean" clubs, and "Grandmothers" clubs have been established.

Assessing the communication work, implementing Resolution No. 21-NQ/TW on population work in the new situation, the innovation of propaganda and mobilization content is extremely necessary, especially when Nghe An is currently still performing two tasks in parallel: Population - Family Planning and Population and Development.

This is also the main content of the draft Project "Innovation and improvement of the quality of population communication in Nghe An in the period of 2020 - 2025". In which, the main goal is to create consensus and active support from the whole society in comprehensively and synchronously solving issues of population size, structure, distribution, quality and placing them in a reciprocal relationship with socio-economic development.

Consulting and providing medicine to areas with high birth rates in Phuc Thanh commune (Yen Thanh). Photo: PV

At the same time, continue to reduce the birth rate, reduce the rate of third and higher births to achieve replacement fertility; gradually bring the sex ratio at birth back to natural balance; effectively utilize the golden population structure, adapt to population aging, distribute population reasonably; improve population quality, contribute to the socio-economic development of Nghe An province.

The draft has been approved in principle and is in the process of being finalized, but with the 6 solutions that the industry has proposed, it is hoped that it will create a basis for population communication in localities to be more effective and practical. At the same time, it will create a premise to expand the audience, innovate communication methods in a direction suitable to the target audience, update new communication trends and improve the effectiveness of the programs.

“Implementing population work cannot be done overnight, but must be done persistently and diversified to attract a large number of people to participate. In Nghe An, thanks to the flexibility in the implementation process, in recent years, population work has received active participation from many groups in society and has built many good models and advanced examples.”

Mr. Nguyen Ba Tan - Head of the Provincial Department of Population and Family Planning