Criticism begins at home

A mother reads to her children at the Pasteur Kindergarten in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City. Adults, especially parents and teachers, often overlook the impacts of their own behavior on children.

Google nu sinh (schoolgirls).

If you are expecting to come across charming, naïve schoolgirly stuff, you are in for a big surprise.

The websites that the search engine throws up are full of articles, images and video clips steeped in sex and violence.                                              

The clips are posted and spread online so frequently that they seem to have become the stuff of daily life for today’s youth.

Adults are rightly worried about the increasing appearance of lewd and violent material despite several warnings from experts, conferences and similar gathering.

However, amidst all their hand wringing, have adults ever thought about their own role in creating this situation? About correcting themselves first before asking their children to behave better?

Psychologists and other experts have said that students’ behavior is being partly influenced by that of people around them, especially parents and teachers.

Nguyen Bac Dung, headmaster of the Tran Dai Nghia High School for the Gifted in HCMC, says young people, including teenagers, are sensitive to their surrounding environment, and that it is incumbent on adults to behave properly. If they fail to do so, the youth will be affected directly and this will only exacerbate the influence that illicit books and films have on them, he said.

Recently, a new Facebook page that seeks to set up  a “Club of people who like to speak ill of their teachers” has been drawing increasing participation of student netizens who are using the space to express their disappointment with academic mentors, to badmouth and curse them.

On many teenagers’ blogs, anger against and disappointment with parents is the topic of numerous entries.

It is easy, as some people do, to point to such behavior as evidence of decadence among the youth, the lack of respect for and gratitude to teachers and parents. It is perhaps more prudent to see this as evidence of adults having failed children – teachers not understanding and responding to real needs of their wards; and parents who fail to instill trust, confidence and security in their  children.

A wise man once said it is always good to remember that when you point your finger at someone else, three others are pointing at you. 

Trung Dung (SGTT) 

118 year old woman lost 7 sons in freedom struggle

Tran Thi Viet, 118, persevered after losing seven of eight sons to the war against foreign occupations.

She turns 119 in 2011, but Tran Thi Viet’s memores of events and people she has met over three centuries (19th, 20th and 21st) is still clear.

 

It is not just her age that makes Viet, named the oldest Vietnamese by the Vietnam Records Book Center this month, stand out.

 

The centurion with nearly 500 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is one of the country’s greatest Heroic Mothers, with seven of her children dying battling French and American occupations.

 

Viet, a native of the southern province of Long An, said she got married when she was 21 and gave birth to ten children, including eight sons.

 

As the mother herself was illiterate and their family was too poor to afford tuition fees, all of children received very little formal education.

 

But they were aware of what they wanted to do when seeing their fellow country men killed and their villages destroyed by foreign powers.

 

All of her sons joined the Vietnamese forces to fight against occupations, and seven of them sacrificed their lives for the country.

 

In 1953, her eldest son, 37-year-old Nguyen Van Lien, was killed, leaving three children behind.

 

Seven years later another son, Nguyen Van Tao, died on duty, and a year later, her husband died of injuries sustained after joining an attack against the French colonial forces.

 

And in 1962 and 1963, Viet lost two more sons – Nguyen Van Kien and Nguyen Van Tri – to the foreign occupation.

 

In 1968, her youngest brother Nguyen Van Dau died in a campaign against the US forces.

 

On the same day in 1973, two more sons died in battle.

 

Losing seven sons to the war, including two whose bodies have never been found, didn’t stop the heartbroken mother from going on living, supporting her grandchildren and daughters-in-law who’d lost their husbands.

 

She went fishing and did all kinds of work to earn a living.

 

Now Viet lives with one of her grandsons and his wife in Long An’s Ca Gua hamlet.

 

Sometimes culture researchers come to listen to her singing southern lullaby songs which, according to them, can’t be found anywhere in books.

 

While it is a great happiness to have so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Viet’s grief has never faded away, even after so many years.

 

Nguyen Thi Nguyen, her granddaughter, said: “Many times I’ve seen grandmother lie in the hammock in tears. When I ask if she is okay, she would be silent for a moment, then say: ‘I miss your father and your uncles’.”

 

Source: Tuoi Tre  

Samaritan turns down $50,000 to donate kidney to a poor girl

Vu Quoc Tuan at the 8th national patriot festival in Hanoi.

Vu Quoc Tuan has not had an easy life himself, but is firmly in the business of saving lives -  and expects no reward in return.

His incredible humanity has seen him donate a kidney to a poor girl for free, refusing an offer of US$50,000 made by a better-off family.

Tuan’s story came to light when the 38-year-old native of Phu Tho was honoured at the 8th National Patriots Festival held in Hanoi  on Monday (December 27).

He was working as a guard at the Hanoi Children’s Hospital when Tuan was moved on seeing Ta Thi Thu Ha, 18, the same age as his daughter, struggling with kidney failure. It was the year 2008 and Ha had been suffering for at least six years then.

Learning that the family was poor, with the father a war invalid and the mother the sole breadwinner working as a vendor, he decided to give the girl one of his own kidneys.

When he started to undergo examinations in March 2008 to prepare for the surgery, a family from nearby Hai Phong visited him and offered to pay $50,000 for the kidney, but Tuan told them he had to give it to a niece.

“You have money, so you can find [the kidney] at many places, but if I don’t give the kidney to my niece, she will die,” Tuan said.

Tuan was born to a poor farming family and quit college after one month to take care of his family after his father died of sickness. He said he has been working different jobs around the northern region, thus has a special sympathy for poor people.

Doctors at the hospital were surprised by his decision to donate. No one that they know of had ever donated a kidney to a total stranger.

The donation was made after more than 60 tests were done between March and October 2008, during which time Tuan had to undergo the pain of needles several times, including into his spinal cord.

He had to borrow money to raise his children during the period as the examinations kept him too busy to go to work. His wife, a guest worker in Malaysia, was also struggling there because of the global economic crisis.

The transplant was successful but Tuan didn’t accept a single dong from Ha’s family, though they wished to give him some to help his recovery.

He now has a desk job at the Mechanics Company No.17 under the Ministry of Defense. The company director, Chu The Thinh, offered him the job after the surgery weakened him and he could no longer afford to do hard labor.

Not the first time

Tuan’s job as a guard at the Children’s Hospital was also the result of his second nature – helping others in trouble.

In 2007, he saved a child from two fighting buffalos on the street and was hospitalized with rib fractures.

At the hospital, Tuan offered to donate blood to a girl who needed an emergency operation. The hospital was short of blood, and Tuan, being a universal donor (O group), gladly donated his. The girl’s family found out where he lived and tried to pay him, but he refused. So they helped him get the position.

When working as a hospital guard, Tuan has been known for helping patients’ relatives look for rental homes.

Earlier, when working at construction sites, Tuan had several times carried pregnant women to the hospital for delivery.

And when he was a xe om driver, he often transported poor people for free.

“Every time I see a person in need of help, I just think that if I don’t do anything, they will die. I myself am unhappy, so I understand their situation,” Tuan said.

Source: Thanh Nien 

Children’s shelter escapees lied about torture: police

Two of the four children, Huy (R) and Hai, who escaped from a shelter in Dong Nai, show police the place from which they jumped off from a railway bridge, and were injured.

The four children who sparked public outrage with their story of abuse after escaping from a shelter in Dong Nai last month were telling a tall tale, investigators said Wednesday.

Police in the province’s Bien Hoa Town said they would not open an investigation to find evidence for criminal charges against the shelter’s employees.

A 12-year-old child from the shelter, Nguyen Van Be Hai, known to be particularly naughty and the recipient of frequent censure, had encouraged four others – Nguyen Van Quyet, 13, Le Gia Huy, 5, Diep Hieu Trung, 4, and his brother Diep Tuan Khoa, 6 – to flee the shelter at around 1 a.m. on November 8.

Quyet, who woke up later and attempted to follow the other four, was later found wandering in the area, lost, and local residents returned him to the shelter, which takes care of orphaned and abandoned children.

The other four, led by Hai, took a bus to Ho Chi Minh City where they were found by a passerby and taken to the local police. They told the police they fled after being abused at the shelter.

Khoa said he was tied to a toilet and dunked in a water tank after soiling his pants.

However, investigators say the children had made up the stories.

Before fleeing the facility, Khoa had a swollen forehead and swelling around his eyes after he fell down when playing with Hai. All the other children were healthy, police said.

When climbing the shelter’s fence, Huy suffered an injury in his left thumb from a sharp iron spike.

They walked toward HCMC and stopped on a railway bridge in Bien Hoa Town’s Hoa An Commune.

When a train approached, the frightened children jumped off the six-meter-high bridge and suffered injuries.

Huy had a bleeding injury in his left hand while Khoa had a broken right arm and multiple injuries in his belly, back, waist and leg.

Investigators separated the children when taking them to the bridge and all of them identified the same place they’d jumped off from, police said.

The children then took a bus to Le Hong Phong Street in HCMC, where they were found by local resident On Diep Thanh who took them to the Ward 4 police station in District 5. Khoa and Huy were admitted to the Children’s Hospital for treatment while Hai and Trung were taken to the HCMC Social Sponsors Center.

Khoa admitted upon questioning that he had not been tortured by the shelter’s staff as he had claimed earlier.

Huy had said that his belly had been bruised by the edge of a water tank as he was tortured but police found such an injury could not have been caused by the smooth edge of the tank.

Meanwhile, Hai’s eye-witness account of Trung being dunked in a water tank early this year was also not true, investigators concluded, because the latter was actually admitted to the shelter only in June.

Earlier, a senior official at the shelter had denied all accusations and asked for a criminal investigation into the case.

“I was really shocked when they said my husband and I had seriously assaulted them,” Le Thi Thanh Lan, deputy director of the shelter, told the media.

“We consider them our own children and we were in the process of adopting [one of them]. We always bring them with us on vacations or when we go out to eat,” she said. “I have never abused them with clubs and chains as they claim. I want the police to investigate [these accusations].”

On November 10, the Youth Union branch in Dong Nai Province issued a decision to suspend Lan for one month pending an investigation into the children’s claims.

Le Thi My Phuong, director of the Dong Nai Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, said the shelter has played an important role in protecting and taking care of the orphans and abandoned children.

The children have since been returned to the shelter they escaped from, and Lan’s suspension has been lifted.

Reported by Anh Thu 

Low pay chases teachers away from public kindergartens

With thousands of public kindergarten teachers getting jobs in the private sector, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are experiencing a severe shortage of teachers.

Statistics released by Hanoi government showed that the city lacks 2,898 kindergarten teachers. Investigations showed that many teachers have asked for a long-term leave without payment to run barber shops, according to a Lao Dong report.

Dam Quoc Khanh, vice chairman of Hoang Mai District in Hanoi downtown, said many kindergartens teachers in the area move to private schools for better pay and less pressure.

Nguyen Van Le, principle of the National Nursery Education College, said the fees in public kindergartens, about VND80,000 per child every month, is not enough to guarantee teachers a good pay.

The tuition at private kindergartens is many times higher, Le said.

He said after a year of internship, teachers at private kindergartens can make VND1.5-2 million (US$77-102) a month while the income of public school teachers is much lower.

Public kindergarten teachers in rural areas only get VND700,000-800,000 a month, even VND300,000-400,000 at some places.

“Thus, most students graduating from the college have gone to private schools.”

Le said the number of public kindergarten teachers quitting their job is alarming.

The southern region is now short of around 60,000 teachers for public kindergartens, he said.

Each class at nursery schools is only allowed to have 30-35 children, “but most public schools have had to increase the number to make the most of limited teachers,” the college principle told VnExpress.

The tuition standard for public schools has become “very unreasonable,” he said. “My college has many times mentioned this to the Ministry of Education and Training but we’ve seen no changes yet.”

Nong Thi Tuy Van, principle of a public kindergarten, said the payment for public kindergarten teachers has been fixed for the past ten years.

Van earns VND3.8 million a month despite more than 30 years of experience.

“My salary probably sounds great to many teachers, but it’s still very low for a school principle with my experience,” she said.

Job pressure

According to the teachers themselves, long working days and relentless pressure makes their lives harder.

“I used to love my job very much, but that was a long time ago,” a kindergarten teacher told VnExpress.

“It was the goal of my life to become a kindergarten teacher. But after six years in the job, my fervent wish is to find another. The constant pressure keeps me tense and drives me to anger.”

Many kindergarten teachers in HCMC said they work ten hours instead of eight every day.

They are asked to arrive at 6:30 a.m. to clean classes. Even a five minute delay can result in salary deductions, the teachers said.

They have to teach in overcrowded classrooms, prepare lessons at night; clean toys every week; and wash the classrooms every month.

“What irks the most are monthly inspections by school officials and local education authorities. The inspectors scrutinize everything from children’s behavior, hygiene and learning improvement, to class conditions and the teachers’ records,” said another teacher.

“Each class has 40 children learning and playing all the time. When they eat, we have to set up the tables. Then they sleep and we have to clean up everything. It’s really impossible to list all the things we do here,” she said.

Another public kindergarten teacher said “I hope the government gives more support to kindergartens so we can pay more attention to our jobs as teachers.

“The job is tiring and the payment is barely enough for food and daily transport. I have little left to help my family.”

Source: Agencies 

Breast-fed boys do better at school: study

A baby bottle-fed in Ho Chi Minh City. Infants breast-fed for six months or longer, especially boys, perform better academically than bottle-fed children at school, a study has found.

A new study has found that infants breast-fed for six months or longer, especially boys, perform better academically than bottle-fed children at school, newswire HealthDay News recently reported.

The study, published online December 20 in Pediatrics – the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was conducted by Wendy Oddy, a researcher at the Australia-based Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, and her colleagues.

According to the news source, the study group surveyed the academic scores at age 10 of more than 1,000 children in Western Australia.

After adjusting for gender, family income, maternal factors, and early stimulation at home like reading to children, the study found that babies breast-fed for six months or longer had higher academic scores on standardized tests than those breast-fed for less than six months.

However, the improvements were only significant from a statistical point of view for the boys, according to the study.

In fact, the surveyed boys were found to score better in math, reading, spelling and writing if they were breast-fed six months or more, while girls had a small but statistically insignificant benefit in reading scores, HealthDay News quoted the study as saying.

The reason for the gender difference is unclear.

But, Oddy said that the protective role of breast milk on the brain and its later consequences for language development may have greater benefits for boys because they are more vulnerable during critical development periods.

Dr. Ruth Lawrence, director of the Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center at the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine in New York said that the new findings should not discourage mothers from breastfeeding their daughters, because human milk has nutrients important for brain development for both sexes.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), less than 20 percent of infants in Vietnam are breastfed exclusively during the first six months.

The organization estimates the average rate of exclusive breastfeeding for Asia at 42 percent.

Source: Thanh Nien 

City schools add yoga

Children at a Ho Chi Minh City kindergarten during a yoga session

Yoga has become a part of the daily routine for Ho Chi Minh City schoolchildren - grades K to 12.

 

Tre Tho (Little Children) kindergarten in Tan Binh District says it was the first school in Vietnam to include yoga in their syllabus.

 

The children begin their lessons by gathering in a circle and take slow, deep breaths while sitting and lying.

 

Soft music is turned on, the children are told to close their eyes and sit in the lotus position, listening to a fairy tale told by the teacher.

 

Sometimes the teacher stops and asks the children to visualize, with their eyes still closed, an object like an animal, mentioned in the story.

 

The teachers have also tried to associate a character in the fairy tales – the bee, the tree, the flower or the crocodile – with a yoga act.

 

“I like the crocodile and the lion pose," said Ho Nhuan Phat, 5. "Every time I practice, I feel stronger. I always do it for my parents to see at home.”

 

Nguyen Thi Binh, principal of the kindergarten, said yoga has been taught at the school for two months. “We have done a research and found out that several schools in Japan have taught yoga to kindergarten children, so we decided to follow.”

 

Thai yoga trainer Didi Ananda Carushila helps the school teachers and teacher assistants to have ten children practice at a time, for around 60 minutes.

 

Meanwhile, Luong The Vinh High School in District 1 now offers yoga classes every Sunday as an extra-curricular activity. The school has even invited an Indian trainer to instruct the students.

 

Do Hoang Hung, an eleventh grader at the school, said “My friends and I are very interested. We feel relaxed and buoyant after every session.

 

“And the most important thing is we learn to concentrate thanks to meditation practice.”

 

The school principal Kim Vinh Phuc said they began offering yoga classes after many parents complained about how their children spent all their time at home playing online games.

 

“Many students have told me they want the school to maintain the class regularly,” Phuc said.

 

Doctor Nguyen Trong Anh, vice chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Sports and Gymnastics Medicine Association, said students including kindergarteners are restless and can hardly focus on a specific thing.

 

So yoga is very useful in cultivating their ability to concentrate.

 

Yoga has been taught during gym classes at many schools in the US, Japan and India.

 

Several yoga centers in Hanoi and HCMC have also opened classes for children.

 

Source: Tuoi Tre 

No going back

A boy begs for alms in Kabul

It took Terry Gordon all of five months to decide Afghanistan was not the place for him to be, the rich financial gains notwithstanding.

Gordon left Vietnam after five years, leaving behind an expectant Vietnamese wife to work as Manager for the Supreme Group of companies which supplies food for the 200,000 NATO troops stationed there.

With, as the New York Times recently reported, “the Obama administration …increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014,” there seemed to be no end to another protracted conflict initiated by the United States.

As one of only about 50 white businessmen in Kabul, Gordon felt conspicuously exposed to the dangers of a violence-racked nation.

Speaking with Thanh Nien Weekly shortly after the family reunion on his return to Saigon, Gordon said he had decided to stay on in safe and secure Vietnam, having got an offer to head the IP Software and Business Development division of ATI Telecom.

“I feel guilty not going back to Kabul because I have friends there,” he said ruing the fact that he’d left without saying goodbye.

Gordon’s wife Ta Thuy Ha said she had advised him to stay away from army people and wear clothes like the locals.

“To avoid worrying too much, I did not read about the war on Afghanistan during the time my husband was there. We chatted every night and SMSed during the day. He told me everything except the trips to the South or the North of Afghanistan,” she said.

Ha is not surprised with Gordon’s decision. “After a while he knew it’s not worth staying on in Afghanistan. He told me that whenever he had to travel by car within the city he had a terrible feeling that he did not know what will happen.”

Terry Gordon, one of 50 white businessmen in Kabul, at Mazar-I-Sharing, a city in Afganistan. He has just returned to Saigon after working in Afghanistan for five months. Photos courtesy of Terry Gordon.

Gordon said that in Kabul, he could earn three times as much money as in Ho Chi Minh City, with a 12-month contract netting a six-figure income. With that kind of money, he could have bought an apartment in HCMC soon. But Afghanistan taught him there were things more important than making a quick buck.

Gordon is a former administrative officer in the Australian air force. He came to Vietnam on a holiday and later returned to work as a tour leader for Intrepid, an Australian travel agent in Vietnam.

Gordon said that his wife let him go to Kabul because she knew she had no option. “I missed the time in the army. By the way, I promised her to come back in one year,” he said.

Surviving in Kabul

“The thing that scared me the most was not the Taliban army but kidnappers. White people are prime targets for kidnapping. (And I cannot see who is Taliban and who is not.)“

According to Gordon, wealthy Afghanistan families who could afford to leave have already left. Those who stayed back are the ones who could not afford to leave.

In Afghanistan, he said everyone was out to get what one could and everybody was there for the money.

“They are lovely people but they cannot trust others. They have been constantly at war for hundreds of years,” said Gordon.

He said that to avoid attention, he never used the army car and did not hire bodyguards. He always covered himself with a big blanket just like the Afghans.

I always took along a small package with passport, passport copies, clothes, water and matches in case I had to leave quickly,” he said.

Another planet

Gordon said when he first saw the desert mountains ranges with small green valleys, he felt he was landing on Mars.

Working as an operations manager for the Supreme Group which provides food, catering, logistics, clothes and aviation services to NATO, Gordon said he worked with people from different countries.

To survive there, one has to be good at dealing with people, communication and understanding different cultures, he said.

Gordon said the only thing that made him feel good during the time in Kabul was that the company employed 1,000 local people which helped them support their families. And when his staff met him they put their hands on their hearts and said “thank you.”

Early on in his assignment, Gordon found, much to his dismay, that he had to move from one place to another, which scared him.

He lived in a container tank; in an electronic world, with bodyguards, and protected by high fences, “just like a prison.”

“I counted the days and months and the last month lasted so long. And for the last day, I was counting every hour”. He was lucky that his place was never broken into, but he knows people tried to.

Gordon showed Thanh Nien Weekly pictures of children with old faces as if they’d never had a childhood. He said there were always children offering to take care of his car. At first there were around five street children and when he came back there were around 25 kids waiting for money from him.

He thought of sending Vietnamese people to work in Afghanistan, but reconsidered later. “I would feel guilty if I encouraged people to go where they could get hurt,” he said.

Back in Vietnam, things have changed.

“Before he would get angry easily, but after his time in Kabul, he has become calmer. He has had a lot of time to reflect and now he appreciates life more,” said Ha.

Reported by Nga To 

Thousands of children hospitalized during Hanoi, HCMC cold snaps

Children being admitted to the Children Hospital No. 2 in Ho Chi Minh City.

Cold weather is being blamed for thousands of children with diarrhea in Hanoi as well as the spread of colds and flu to thousands more in Ho Chi Minh City during the past few weeks.

Tuesday afternoon, parents were queuing with sick children at Central Children Hospital in Hanoi. The hospital said they were overloaded by three times their patient capacity in recent days.

“My baby has been vomiting and suffering with diarrhea for two days,” said a mother of a one-year-old child from Dong Da District at the hospital Tuesday.

Doctor Can Phu Nhuan, dean of the Central Children Hospital’s examination department said between 1,300 and 1,500 children had been brought to the hospital for examinations everyday, recently adding that diarrhea patients accounted for 30 percent of admissions.

He said diarrhea patients may not have high temperatures if it is caused by a virus.

“Diarrhea may cause severe dehydration which is very dangerous,” he said. “Patients should be taken to the hospital right away when showing symptoms like thirst, dry lips and crying without tears.”

The Saint Paul Hospital in Hanoi has examined around 600 children everyday recently, a third of them with diarrhea.

Doctor Hoang Minh Thu of the Saint Paul Hospital said the children had contracted Rotavirus, which is more common in the cold season.

Doctors also advised parents to rehydrate their sick children before taking them to hospital, adding that improper treatment at home could worsen the potentially fatal disease.

“Parents should offer oral rehydration therapy as first aid before taking them to hospital,” doctor Nhuan advised, adding to administer only small sips to avoid nausea.

He also called for good parental hygiene practices to prevent the spread of the virus to more children.

“Sometimes, adults contract the virus but display no symptoms,” he said adding that they could still transmit it to their children.

In Ho Chi Minh City the recent dry cold weather has led to a lot of children with respiratory problems.

The highest risk of children catching respiratory disease and diarrhea is during this time of the year, Nguyen Thi Hanh Le, deputy director of HCMC Children’s Hospital No. 2 told Thanh Nien on Monday.

Le said there were 120 respiratory in-patients using 70 beds at the hospital Tuesday.

She noted that children around two to three years of age easily catch respiratory diseases, colds and viruses every time the weather changes.

The number of respiratory patients at the city’s Children Hospital No.1 has been increasing with more than 100 children brought for examination every day, mostly under age 3.

Doctor Nguyen Phuong Hoa Binh from the Children Hospital No.2 added that there were also asthma-related cases.

Pham Thi Ngoc Tuyet, dean of the hospital’s digestion department said her department received more than 600 children in the first three weeks of this month, adding that the department often treats 120 or more children at a time.

Mothers were advised to keep their children warm and pay attention to food hygiene, especially until the end of January, Children Hospital No. 2’s Le said.

Doctors Nhuan of the Central Children Hospital said parents should strictly follow doctors’ prescriptions for antibiotics and diarrhea medicine.

Medical experts also warned about mumps, rubella and chicken-pox among children in January and February.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff

Over 80 percent of Vietnamese children suffer tooth decay

A child has his teeth examined at a HCMC dental clinic. Experts report that 80-90 percent of Vietnamese children aged six to eight have tooth decay.

A recent conference highlighted an alarming rate of dental disease among the country’s youth and the need to improve dental education.

More than 80 percent of Vietnamese primary school students have tooth- and mouth-related diseases, while schools fail to provide adequate dental health education, according to a recent dentistry conference held in Hanoi.

It is estimated that 80-90 percent of children aged six to eight have tooth decay, said Trinh Dinh Hai, head of the National Institute of Odonto-Stomatology Vietnam (NIOS).

Each child has as many as six decayed baby (or milk) teeth, Hai said at the conference held by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) on Wednesday.

And most children don’t receive proper treatment for their decayed teeth, Hai said.

More than 60 percent of children and 50 percent of adults have never had a dental exam, the conference heard.

The number of children with tooth and mouth disease in urban areas is higher than other areas, despite urban children receiving better dental and stomatological care, the Administration of Preventive Medicine under MOH reported.

This is thought to be due to the increased amount of sweets consumed by urban children, the agency said, adding that a lack of fluoride in children’s diets could also contribute to cavities.

The number of children with inclined, or severely crooked teeth, also stands at around 80-90 percent. Experts said this was due to children’s baby teeth not receiving proper and timely care.

Dental services dearth

All schools are required to offer dental education, exams and services at school, but according to HCMC Central Hospital of Odontology and Stomatology Vice Director Ngo Dong Khanh, a school dentist may have from 13,000 to 17,000 patients.

The number of student patients may be as high as 30,000 for dentists working in the Central Highlands region and disadvantaged provinces.

The rates for other countries stand between 1/500 and 1/1,000, according to Khanh.

According to the conference, just eight out of the country’s 64 provinces and cities currently provide qualified dental care services at school for primary students.

NIOS said 46 provinces lack the human resources necessary to run dental programs at schools while poor policies make it difficult to attract new staff.

Forty-seven provinces, meanwhile, said they suffer from a shortage of funding and cannot afford dental programs. Thirty-three provinces reported not having sufficient dental devices and machinery to offer services.

Other experts said there needs to be better cooperation between health and educational agencies.

Difficulties with human resources and funding have forced several school dental offices to stop operating, said Dr. Nguyen Tai Dung, in charge of school health under the HCMC Education and Training Department.

He said 39 out of 400 primary schools in the southern hub have closed down their dental offices, while nearly 26 percent reported they were struggling to keep their offices open.

A representative from central coastal Khanh Hoa Province’s Health Department said schools can employ vocational school graduates to run dental care programs with the provision of further training, instead of recruiting dentists with university degrees.

Hai said it is not expensive to run dental care programs at schools and that communities should work the cost into their annual budget or require parents to help pay.

Without a preventive program, it will cost much more in the long run to treat tooth and mouth diseases, said Hai.

He suggested that MoET introduce dental care programs into its criteria for ranking a school.

La Quy Don, deputy head of the Student Affairs Department under MoET, said one of the ministry’s immediate objectives is to establish courses to train health staff for schools, while improving the skills of current staff to make dental care programs more effective.

VIETNAM’S DENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OBJECTIVES: All schools are to teach kindergarten and primary students how to practice good dental hygiene as set out by health and educational agencies. Students are to gargle with fluoride and brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste each week. Students are to have their teeth and mouth examined and treated when in need. Students are to receive fillings for cavities to prevent further tooth decay. Reported by Tue Nguyen

Source: The Ho Chi Minh City Odonto-maxillo-facial Hospital’s website