Bright colors of Nghe An's population in 2023
(Baonghean.vn) - Nghe An's population picture in 2023 has many positive changes in indicators of reduced fertility and reduced third-child birth rate. This is also a year with many outstanding activities so that more and more people can benefit from population and family planning policies.
Looking back at the achievements and preparing for 2024, Nghe An Newspaper had a conversation with Meritorious Physician, Specialist II Nguyen Ba Tan - Head of the Provincial Department of Population and Family Planning.
PV:Sir, during the recent working trip to Nghe An, the Deputy Director General of the General Department of Population highly appreciated many activities of Nghe An population work, especially in the field of communication. Could you share about the results that the sector has achieved in recent years?
Meritorious Physician, Specialist II Nguyen Ba Tan:I affirm that, for population work, communication is the most important task, aiming to help people raise awareness and self-awareness to change behavior.
Not only in 2023, but in recent years, our communication sector has been well evaluated in both breadth and depth. In which, the breadth is most clearly shown in that 460 communes, wards and towns in 21 districts, cities and towns are covered by communication on population and development work.
Besides, we also do a good job of community communication and communication coordination with provincial units to strengthen and promote communication activities on population and development work in the new situation.
Through that, together with 12 other units such as the Provincial Women's Union, Provincial Youth Union, Association of the Elderly, Department of Education and Training... successfully organized many competitions with high impact and created good impressions. Key communication activities and major holidays were also focused on.
In particular, Nghe An is a leading locality in the country in communication work with many rich and diverse forms, targeting many audiences. In particular, more than 110 community consultation communication sessions with many different contents have been organized. Communication on social networking platforms such as Facebook, Zalo, Tiktok,... has become a fast and effective information and propaganda channel of the industry on population and health policies and activities and is a modern propaganda channel, capable of interacting and spreading to a large number of people.
PV: In 2023, the total number of children born in the whole province will decrease compared to 2022. Along with that, the birth rate, the number of children born as the third child or more in the whole province will also decrease by 1.37%. According to you, can we feel secure with these indicators?
Meritorious Physician, Specialist II Nguyen Ba Tan:Among the 63 provinces and cities today, Nghe An is still one of the 33 provinces and cities with a high birth rate in the country. However, through the synthesis of data from 2019 to 2023, Nghe An's birth rate has continuously decreased and each year we have nearly 900 fewer children born. Like in 2023, with the view that the year of Quy Mao is a good year, we predicted and worried that it would be a year of explosion in the number of children born. But in reality, all indicators have decreased and this is a positive sign.
From these favorable premises, combined with our increased communication efforts, I think that in the coming years, people's awareness of having more children will change a lot, especially among young people of the 8X and 9X generations. At this age, they will have fewer children to ensure they have healthy children and raise them well.
PV:Along with reducing births so that by 2030, Nghe An will reach the replacement level, Nghe An still has to do well in population work and develop and improve the quality of the population. So, in your opinion, how should we understand this and what solutions has the Population sector had to perform well the proposed "dual" task?
Meritorious Doctor, Specialist II Nguyen Ba Tan:We can understand that population and development is the development of human capacity in which education, health, life expectancy, and income must all increase. In these factors, the task of the health sector is to advise, intervene, and directly increase the average life expectancy of people, to have many healthy years...
To concretize this task, over the years,Population sectorhas divided many objects to care for according to different stages, from the early stages of life to be able to have healthy babies. Next is to care for adolescents, young people, women of childbearing age.
The last group is the elderly. This is a very difficult problem not only in Nghe An but also in the whole country, because in reality, health care for the elderly is still limited. Meanwhile, the proportion of elderly people in the whole province is very high, about 12% of the population. We are gradually moving away from the golden population period and starting to enter the aging population. Caring for the elderly is also a key task, focused on in 2024.
This year, the whole industry also aims to focus on achieving and exceeding assigned targets; especially the targets of reducing births, reducing the rate of giving birth to the third child or more, reducing the gender ratio at birth and gradually improving the quality of population and health care for the elderly...
The sector will continue to effectively implement projects and plans of the Population and Development Target Program along with projects and models approved by the Provincial People's Committee.
At the same time, focus all efforts on directing, operating and prioritizing investment in population work in special areas with high birth rates; closely coordinate with departments, branches and organizations from the province to the grassroots in strengthening the organization of propaganda activities, mobilizing party members, cadres, civil servants, public employees, union members, association members and people to strictly implement the population and development policies of the Party and State.
PV:Thank you for the chat!
