Gov’t chief receives Assistant to UN Secretary-General

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) and UN Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement Gerda Verburg, Ha Noi, January 31, 2018 – Photo: VGP/Ha Noi

PM Phuc highly valued the UN’s support for Viet Nam in fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals especially those on nutrition and healthcare. The Party and State of Viet Nam always attach importance to nutrition-related issues to improve stature, fitness and intelligence of Vietnamese people, thus helping increase the quality of human resources, said PM Phuc.

Ms. Gerda Verburg spoke highly of the fact that the Communist Party of Viet Nam had issued a resolution and the Prime Minister promulgated a decree on nutrition, which shows the attention and the vision of the country’s leaders to this issue.

She said that nutrition should be a cross-cutting issue in the Government’s working agenda. 

Based on experience of countries in the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, she suggested Viet Nam set up a high-level mechanism to help the Health Ministry fulfill its tasks involved in nutrition. The country should also take measures to call for public involvement and mobilize resources from the entire society to help the Government achieve nutrition targets in remote areas.

The government also needs to hold more dialogue with the private sector to receive their support and intensify international cooperation, she added. 

Agreeing with Verburg’s proposals, PM Phuc stated that the Government has carried out a lot of programs to improve nutrition and physical strength for ethnic minority people, and encourage the participation of the private economic sector in socio-economic development, including in nutrition improvement.

He hoped that the UN would continue providing financial and technical assistance for Viet Nam in this field./. 

By Kim Anh