Vietnam now has approximately 97.5 million people, according to latest UN statistics, ranking 14^th in the world. Vietnam has major achievements in population and family planning. Its life expectancy has increased to 73.5. The rates of child malnutrition and maternal and infant mortality have fallen sharply. Though the quality of its population has improved, Vietnam’s Human Development Index has not reached the top 100 due to low scores for height, weight, and physical health.

More investment is needed to improve human resource and social security to cope with an aging population problem. But it’s more urgent to make sure babies are born healthy. Nguyen Van Tan, Deputy Head of the General Department of Population and Family Planning: “The health sector has restructured prenatal and postnatal diagnostic and scanning centers. We will organize training to improve capacity building in diagnosis and treatment and expand the preventive health networks to early diagnose diseases in pregnancy and infants.”

Though focused on improving population quality, Vietnam still pays attention to family planning to ensure that parents create optimal conditions for their children’s growth.