Long before the Communist era, people relied on their families to help and to supply health care when you were sick. After 1986, the farmers and laborers had to pay for their health care even though they were not very well off. Many people had no job, but were forced to pay for them and their children's health care. It was a sad time period for those who were not wealthy. Now people are supplied health care from their work business. Back then, if you didn't have money, you were not taken care of.
One organization that is helping Vietnam to better their health care and current health issues is Save the Children. A project they did to help stop the malnutrition was the "Positive Deviance" approach in 1990. Throughout Vietnam's rural areas, children were very malnourished. However, some of the families with the same resources managed to keep their children healthy. The Save the Children group learned what these families did to keep themselves healthy. Save the Children taught other families the same practices that the healthy family used. Another project that Save the Children did was providing classes for parents and teaching adolescents about how to help prevent HIV.
In 1998, the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction program was started. It was launched to help the Vietnamese families. They were at a point in time where they had to pay for the majority of the health care. This program gave the families health care perks that they would not have otherwise.The programs wiped out preventable disease such as polio. There are more medicines available in Vietnam for the children now. More types of health care are being available.
After Vietnamese people left Vietnam and came to America, they knew what it was like to live they desperately needed to have in poverty and without the necessities. So they started organizations to help the people still living in Vietnam. One organization is VNAH. It is a non profit foundation that is targeted toward handicapped people in rural areas of Vietnam. It was started in 1991. Another group is HOPE. They are also providers in health care for people of Vietnam. But they are targeted toward the children. These two groups went to Vietnam to provide for the chidren. They gave them check- ups and cleaned their teeth. They also brought tablets that would kill the parasites that infected the children's mouths. The organizations also brought milk for its nutritional purposes. The VNAH and HOPE teams help greatly to start a new and healthier generation in Vietnam.
UNICEF has been helping Vietnamese families with the health care for a long time.They have had vaccinations and immunizations for children to stop polio. Otherwise, it might still be thriving as a disease. Because the UNICEF organization has been helping, the rate of measles for children has gone down by 95 % since 1990. Before UNICEF was helping out, the number of infant deaths was 38 per 1000. Now it is only 16 per 1000. That may not seem like a big difference. But because malnutrition is common and not many children are growning up healthily, less deaths can help start the next generation of achievers.
Like UNICEF, many other organizations have chosen to help the people in Vietnam. Children are getting the education they need. Schools are being built. Orphanages are getting better funding. Some groups also have programs for people to spomsor a child to go through school and have a better life. They are able to donate to hospitals.
Help the Poor Vietnam - Another Organization that helps
There are many groups that are choosing to help the Vietnamese. Help the Poor Vietnam is another one of these groups. They fund several medical teams to give free check ups and medications to children and their families who are poor. Building hospitals and funding medical buildings in poor, remote areas is another thing that they do. Help the Poor Vietnam also pays for some types of surgeries if people are unable to pay for it themselves.
One disease that greatly affects the Vietnamese children is Dengue Fever. The rate of people affected by it in Vietnam has gone up 10 percent this year. Now Dengue Fever is affecting everyone. Before it mostly only affected the children. Some children were getting flu-like symptoms while others had fatal complications such as hemorrhaging and blood vessels leaking. Kids who got Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever had symptoms like blood vessels collapsing. Because this disease was transmitted through mosquitoes, many children got this sickness.
Dengue Fever has been on the rise, but with the upcoming knowledge people have found ways to lessen the numbers of people affected.