Nghe An Department of Health cooperates with Amway Vietnam to reduce the rate of malnourished children

On October 30, Amway Vietnam coordinated with Nghe An Department of Health to launch the project "Improving Nutrition for Children Under 5 Years Old" in the province. The program is part of the cooperation agreement signed by Amway Vietnam and the Ministry of Health in April.

All malnourished children in 21 districts receive free nutrition support.

According to the Institute of Nutrition (Ministry of Health), Nghe An is among the 12 provinces with the highest rate of stunting in the country (over 35%). The rate of children under 5 years old with stunting is 29%, underweight is 18% and wasting is 5.8%.

Leaders of Nghe An Department of Health and Amway Vietnam launched a nutrition support project.

At the launching ceremony, Nghe An Department of Health directed preventive health centers across the province to join Amway Vietnam in bringing free nutritional products to thousands of children in rural and mountainous areas. In addition, Amway Vietnam, together with experts from the Ministry of Health, will support professional training for local health workers, and disseminate nutritional knowledge for raising children in the first 5 years of life to pregnant women and mothers with young children. Currently, only 6.7% of mothers in Nghe An breastfeed their children until they are 2 years old. The rate of children 6-23 months old receiving proper and adequate weaning food is only 50.4%. The rate of children 6-35 months old receiving vitamin A supplements is 4.9%.

Nutrilite Little Bits plant nutrients are easily absorbed and friendly to children's digestive systems.

5 years pursuing community nutrition improvement project

The project “Improving nutritional status for children under 5 years old” is a major step in the “Nutrilite Power of 5” campaign initiated by Amway Vietnam in 2015. Previously, the group provided 26,497 boxes of Nutrilite Little Bits products to 6,773 poor children in Bac Giang, Lao Cai and Thanh Hoa. In 2016, the project was certified by the National Institute of Nutrition, contributing to positive improvements in weight and height for 400 children aged 2-5 in Luc Ngan district (Bac Giang). After 6 months of receiving free nutritional support, the rate of stunting malnutrition has decreased from 22.8% to 17.3%.

With a scale expanded 14 times (85,362 children), concentrated in 2 localities with high levels of malnutrition (Nghe An and Ha Giang), Amway Vietnam hopes to foster healthy physical health and strong intelligence for the next generations.

Amway Group will provide 1,024,344 boxes of Nutrilite Little Bits products for free to 85,362 children in Nghe An and Ha Giang within 2 years (2019 - 2020).

“Improving nutrition in children requires serious and long-term investment. Over the past 5 years, Amway has accompanied the Ministry of Health in implementing the Nutrilite Power of 5 campaign and achieved many tangible results. That is the motivation for Amway to continue expanding the scale and duration of the project, contributing to community health care and improving the nutritional quality of Vietnamese children.”

Nguyen Phuong Son - Director of External Relations, Amway Vietnam

According to UNICEF, 50% of children aged 0-5 worldwide are micronutrient deficient. Nearly 150 million children aged 0-4 are not at standard height. Out of every 6 children, 3 are latently hungry and 2 are malnourished. In Vietnam, 1 in 4 children is stunted. Malnutrition in mountainous areas is 3 times higher than in the plains and in rural areas is 2 times higher than in urban areas.

Therefore, not stopping at the S-shaped strip of land, Amway has launched 24 major campaigns in 15 countries by adding Nutrilite Little Bits micronutrient packages to the daily meals of children under 5 years old. The goal by the end of 2019, the campaign will support 500,000 children worldwide to improve their health to develop healthier, as well as raise nutritional awareness in the first 5 years of life for millions of mothers.