The Head of the General Office for Population and Family Planning highlighted Vietnam’s progress over the last 5 decades in changing the population structure, improving the average life expectancy and controlling the fast population growth. Mr. Duong Quoc Trong said  that the average number of children per household in Vietnam dropped remarkably, from six in 1960 to two in 2009. According to Mr. Trong, the country’s population and family planning policy has been fine tuned over the years to improve the quality of population. This year’s national fertility rate has reduced remarkably by 3 percent compared to the same period last year. “The country has focused on reducing fertility rate over the past years. It is now time to prioritize enhancing the quality of population, health conditions of mothers and children, taking advantage of the golden population structure, proactively adjusting the population growth and controlling sex ratio disparity at birth”, he said.