Vietnam military to join Brunei rescue exercise

The Vietnam People’s Army rescue team will take part in a military exercise on rescue work and relief aid in Brunei this June.

This will be Vietnam’s first time participating in a military exercise abroad with the aim of strengthening cooperation among Southeast Asian military forces.

Photo: VOV

Addressing a conference on rescue work in Hanoi on May 29, Colonel Pham Van Ty, Deputy Head of the National Committee for Search and Rescue Office, said the Brunei rehearsal will help Vietnamese rescue workers improve their capacity and boost collaboration with other regional countries in dealing with natural disasters.

Vietnam has been hit by 814 natural disasters since the beginning of this year, which have killed 162 people and left 87 others missing. Hundreds of houses and transport vehicles have been destroyed and huge amounts of property have been lost.

About five or six major storms and floods are predicted to strike Vietnam in the remaining months of this year, especially in June and July.

The National Committee for Search and Rescue has urged relevant ministries, agencies and localities to map out plans to cope with such calamities, with a focus on rescue work.

Millions of shrimps die

More than 2.6 million shrimps are reported to have died due to an attack of white-spot syndrome virus since early this month in central Ha Tinh Province.

Poor quality breeds, unhygienic water, a heat wave and heavy rains were blamed for the situation, said deputy head of provincial Animal Health Department, Dang Thi Kim Hoan.

The department has helped local shrimp farmers to sterilise their shrimp farms, collect and destroy dead shrimps to avoid spread of the disease.

It is also dealing strictly with those selling poor quality baby shrimps of unclear origin.

Citizen to play role in forest protection

Forestry officials are working to prevent illegal logging hotspots in the province by raising the role of citizens.

According to statistics, the northern mountainous province has nearly 186,000 hectares of forest. The province has managed to bring forest coverage area from 18.2 per cent in 1991 to 51.3 per cent as of May 2013.

According to Nguyen Van Vui, head of the Lao Cai Bureau on Forest Protection, forestry officials have been also working to raise awareness of local residents on limiting farming practices that pose risks to the forest, such as slash-and-burn or wood burning to get charcoal.

The provincial people's committee has agreed to provide allowances for residents at the local level who are involved frequently in forestry protection.

Surgery saves child with ruptured liver

A 6-year-old child from Thot Not District in the Mekong Delta's Can Tho City was saved from rupture kidney and liver, the City's General Hospital announced on Monday.

The patient had to have three hours of surgery, and 14 units of blood transfusions after being hospitalised with abdominal pain, pale skin and hypertension.

The child fell off her friend's motorbike and was run over by a truck.

Vietnam ensures better nursing, midwifery

The National Action Programme for Nursing and Midwifery for the 2013 – 2020 period has manifested the Vietnamese Government’s strong commitment to accelerate the progress of fulfilling millennium development goals, especially saving maternal and new-born lives.

It was highlighted at a symposium in Hanoi on May 29, co-hosted by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the United Nations Population Fund in Vietnam (UNPFA).

At the event, Deputy Health Minister Le Quang Cuong said the programme acknowledges the importance of nurses and midwives in the health care system and encourages them to provide high-quality medical services. This will help save more lives, especially those living in mountainous and ethnic people-resided areas.

Delegates pointed out challenges that need to be addressed to improve the role of medical staff working in this field.

Mandeep K.O’Brien, UNPFA acting chief representative, stressed the importance of investment in medical workers, especially those working in nursing and midwifery, saying that it is a cost-effective strategy.

MoH and UNPFA representatives pledged to lessen inequality in accessing medical services by 2015, especially among vulnerable groups.

Two years before the deadline for fulfilling the millennium development goals, the Government, UN, development partners, private sector and social organisations are urged to work closely together for a fair health care service in Vietnam.

Synchronised social welfare data base sorely needed

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan has called for the building of a more synchronised national database on social welfare.

Addressing a conference in Ha Noi on Tuesday, Nhan said its development would help enhance the effectiveness of assistance to those in need.

The Deputy PM said that Brazil, South Africa, Chile, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia all used to experience the same social-assistance problems as Viet Nam.

"However, those countries have renovated their social-assistance systems by building up a national database," he said. Nhan also said they had applied advanced management systems to all procedures, including registration, management, payments, supervision and evaluation. This enabled monthly assistance packages to be paid timely and transparently.

"The completion of the system is an important policy to reduce poverty and ensure social welfare," he said.

Under the discussed project, poor households with children aged from one to 15 (or above, if they are still going to school) in the provinces of northern Ha Giang, central Quang Nam and the Central Highlands' Lam Dong, will take part in a pilot scheme to receive support. Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Pham Thi Hai Chuyen said the project aimed to streamline assistance policies by offering aid packages and social welfare separately.

It also plans to put an end to overlapping social policies and renovate the unsynchronised database, she said.

Statistics show there are more than 2.65 million beneficiaries of social assistance, 5.5 times higher than in 2006. There are 432 centres for social support and nursing, providing care to 42,000 disadvantaged people nationwide.

JICA supports human resource development

A Japanese-funded project on enhancing human resource capacity for the water sector in Vietnam’s central region has been a success, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) said at a review conference on May 28.

The three-year project starting in August 2010 targeted 18 water companies in the central region with the aim of helping them ensure safe and stable water supply.

The project’s major partner, a training centre in Hue city, has been provided with adequate skills and equipment to develop short-term training courses for local water companies.

In addition, the project organised training trips and seminars in Japan for the target companies’ leaders to increase their awareness of the importance of human resource development.

Accordingly, five leading companies have completed theirs plans of safe water supply, human resource development and operation manuals.

The training centre in Hue also succeeded in building a cooperation model with Thua Thien-Hue Water Supply and Construction Company (HUEWACO), which will be maintained and expanded after the project ends.

JICA has worked with Vietnam’s water sector for almost 10 years supporting, particularly in human resource development.

Hue hosts int’l conference of informatics experts

Domestic and international informatics experts gathered in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue for the 7th KES International Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (AMSTA - 2013).

The event on May 27-29 was co-hosted by the KES International and Hue University to provide an internationally respected forum for scientific research in the technologies and applications of agent and multi-agent systems.

Prof. Andrzej Szalas from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and Prof. Arkady Zaslavsky from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia, were keynote speakers at the event.

As many as 45 outstanding papers by authors from 22 countries and territories worldwide were also chosen for publication by IOS Press as book chapters in the Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence and Applications (FAIA) series.

Agents and multi-agent systems are related to a modern software paradigm which has long been recognized as a promising technology for constructing autonomous, complex and intelligent systems.

HCM City, Australian state promote training cooperation

The Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) and HCM City signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on May 29 to promote training cooperation at high schools and colleges for students, teachers, and administration managers.

Le Hong Son, Director of the HCM City Department of Education and Training (DET), said NSW will develop vocational training courses, provide English software copyrights for students and acknowledge certificates and some modules of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) at high schools and colleges in the city.

A number of exchange visits between students and teachers from HCM City and NSW will also be organised.

Pam Christie, representative for TAFE and Community Education at the NSW Department of Education and Training, said Vietnam and Australia have made great efforts in training highly qualified human resources to meet the advances in science and technology.

According to the DET, the TAFE training program will be piloted at three schools in HCM City, namely the Thu Duc College of Technology, Nguyen Huu Canh Technical Economics School, and Phu Lam Technical Economics College.

Soldier remains repatriated from Cambodia

Thirty-seven sets of remains of volunteer Vietnamese soldiers who died during wartime in Cambodia were handed over to the Central Highland Province of Gia Lai on May 28.

Um Mara, governor of the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear presented the remains to Pham The Dung, chairman of the Gia Lai provincial People’s Committee.

Cambodian monks held a solemn requiem for Vietnamese combatants before the remains were repatriated to their homeland.

Gia Lai province has decided to build the Vietnam-Cambodia Combat Alliance Monument in Preah Vihear.

Since 2005 the Central Highland province has received 445 sets of remains of volunteer Vietnamese soldiers from Preah Vihear.

Water supply system not up to expectations

The water supply system in the mountainous Ba Xa Commune in the central province of Quang Ngai's Ba To District has not worked for eight years, causing difficulties for 1,200 local residents.

According to commune Party Secretary Pham Van O, the VND600 million (US$28,000) system stopped working two years after being put into operation in 2003, leading to serious water shortages, especially in the dry season.

A total of about eight projects providing clean water in the province and run by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development are said to be damaged.

Power failure affects 5000 households

More than 5,000 families in four districts in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum suffered from a power failure caused by lightning strikes early this week, local authorities said.

The blackout happened after a tree struck by lightning felt onto a nearby power line. The provincial electricity authority has resupplied power in the districts of Kon Plong and Kon Ray, but power loss in Dak To and Tu Mo Rong districts is still under way.

Local authorities are planning to replace out-of-date power equipment.

VNN/VOV/VNS/VNA