UNICEF Representative in Vietnam, Rana Flowers speaks at the conference

The report cited the National Nutrition Surveillance 2017 as saying that 24 per cent Vietnamese children under five are stunted, 6 per cent are wasted, and the remaining 6 per cent are overweight.

The report warns that poor eating and feeding practices start from the earliest days of a child’s life. This finding is highlighted by a landscape analysis on complementary feeding and maternal nutrition as part of the Regional Initiative for Sustained Improvements in Nutrition and Growth (RISING) and carried out by the Vietnam National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) in 2019. The analysis showed that complementary feeding practices and maternal nutrition in Vietnam are largely inadequate and inappropriate, contributing to the burden of malnutrition.

From the very start of life, many children in Vietnam are not getting proper nutrition. Inadequate maternal diets result in underweight and overweight women who are more likely to have low birth weight babies. Further, inadequate diets during the complementary feeding phase when the first foods are introduced between 6 months and 2 years are common in Vietnam. According to national nutrition surveillance 2015, 18 per cent of children do not have a diet that is sufficiently perse and 36 per cent are not fed frequently enough.

Speaking at the conference to announce the report, UNICEF Representative in Vietnam, Rana Flowers said that while Vietnam has made good progress in reducing its rate of undernutrition in recent decades, chronic malnutrition or stunting remains unacceptably high and there is a risk that rates of overweight will rise.

“The costs of not addressing malnutrition in its all forms including stunting, underweight, wasting, hidden hunger, overweight in children are rising – a better investment is to provide nutrition services through multiple systems including a strengthened food and primary health care system”, she added.

The RISING Initiative specifically calls for an improvement in the diets of women and young children during the complementary feeding period from 6 to 24 months of age, as essential for addressing malnutrition in Vietnam.

VNF ( Dtinews )