Efforts to improve the effectiveness of health care policies for ethnic minority women and children

4 policy packages to support ethnic minority women in safe childbirth and child health care under Project 8 “Achieving gender equality and solving urgent issues for women and children”. The project is implemented in 11 districts, 76 communes, 588 villages and hamlets in mountainous Nghe An.

In recent years, the number of women accessing and using health care services for mothers and children of ethnic minorities has increased. However, with 5 main ethnic minorities, including Thai, Tho, Kho Mu, Mong, O Du, accounting for 15.2% of the province's population, living in mountainous, remote and isolated areas, there are still many difficulties.

According to statistics from the Provincial Center for Disease Control, in 2023, the total number of births outside medical facilities was 460, in the first 6 months of 2024 there were 205 births outside medical facilities, mainly in ethnic minority areas.

From that difficulty, over the past 3 years, the implementation of 4 policy packages to support ethnic minority women in safe childbirth and child health care has achieved some important results.

The association at all levels has carried out many activities focusing on 9 core targets, focusing on propaganda and advocacy to change "ways of thinking and doing" to contribute to eliminating prejudices and gender stereotypes in families and communities; building and replicating models to enhance women's economic empowerment; activities to ensure the voice and substantive participation of women and children in socio-economic development activities, social monitoring and criticism; capacity building for female ethnic minority cadres, capacity building for gender mainstreaming cadres in the political system, village elders, village chiefs, and prestigious people in the community; monitoring and evaluating the implementation of gender equality.

At the same time, deploy a support package for mothers and child care, As of May 10, 2024, Nghe An province has paid benefits and policies to 67 mothers who gave birth at medical facilities, with a total amount of 161 million VND.

Regarding propaganda work, the association at all levels has organized hundreds of communication sessions on issues arising in maternal and child health care in mountainous areas and raising awareness of safe motherhood, child health care and mobilizing women to give birth at medical facilities. Of which, the district level attracted 12,750 members and women to participate and the commune level attracted 18,750 members and women to participate.

At the same time, launch the model of "Club to support knowledge and skills for women on safe motherhood and child health care at home".

At the workshop, representatives of all levels of the association in the province raised a number of difficulties and problems in the implementation of 4 policy packages related to propaganda work and some unclear regulations leading to confusion when building budget estimates; the issue of supporting Kinh women who marry ethnic minorities.

From the above difficulties, representatives of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Women's Union and the Provincial Women's Union have agreed on many solutions to increase the effectiveness of coordination with relevant departments and branches to diversify communication forms, raise awareness and change behaviors about safe motherhood, child health care and encourage women to give birth at medical facilities.

Instruct units to coordinate with the health sector to review, survey and implement support packages for ethnic minority women to give birth safely to pay for the subjects in accordance with regulations. Pay attention to the work of inspecting and supervising the implementation of policies comprehensively and closely in the coming time.