BKFA representatives with a Traditional Birth Attendant after a training session in Thahn Hoa province

Vietnam

Project Overview

Vietnam was one of the first countries where the Birthing Kit Project was expanded. The maternal mortality rate is 130:100,000 live births. The remote mountainous regions where ethnic minority groups live have a much higher maternal mortality rate. The BKFA targets these regions where there are many home births.

The BKFA currently works with two main organisations in Vietnam;

1. Centre for Ecologically Sustainable Agriculture (CENESA)

2. Tu Du Obstetric Hospital

Historically we have worked through Project Vietnam, Australian Vietnam Veterans Reconstruction Group and Christina Noble Children’s Foundation.

Vietnam is also one country where the BKFA has monitored its projects in person since 2006.

Participating Organisations

1. Centre for Ecologically Sustainable Agriculture (CENESA)

The BKFA has established a long and successful relationship with Professor Hoang Trong Quynh, a toxicologist and world specialist in Dioxin (Agent orange). Professor Quynh and his assistant Ms Chau work through CENESA to support our project. He is a respected health professional throughout Vietnam. Through Professor Quynh we have been able to initiate 5 day health training programmes in remote regions of poor provinces where village nurses and traditional birth attendants are educated in health, nutrition, hygiene and midwifery. These training programmes complement the distribution of our clean birthing kits. To date over 5000 individuals have been trained.
In 2008 - 2009 training programmes were carried out in the provinces of Ha Giang and Thahn Hoa in the north and Binh Phouc in the south. AusCHAM in Ho Chi Minh City funded the training program in Binh Phouc Province.

42,800 kits were distributed in 2008 - 09. 29,000 kits were made in Hanoi and were cheaper, had more contents and were more culturally sensitive. 19,000 of these kits were funded by the Hanoi International Women’s Club (HIWC) for Ha Giang and Hoa Binh provinces. BKFA paid for the 10,000 kits for Binh Phouc province to be made in Hanoi, to accompany the AusCHAM training programme. The other 13,800 kits were made in Australia and sent to Vietnam.

2. Tu Du Obstetric Hospital

Tu Du Obstetric Hospital has received over 43,000 kits and targets the most remote Provinces in the South delivering an intensive practically based six month ethnic minority midwife (EMM) training programme for 150 - 300 local women annually. Over the past two years very few communes have not had a birth attendant trained and the Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital is planning to concentrate its project in the Middle and Highland areas of South Viet Nam next year. Each trainee returns to their communes with 10 birthing kits.