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Health Brief: Banning Smoking in Vietnam

Want to light up a cigarette in public? Not so fast, say lawmakers in Vietnam.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Vietnam has passed a law banning smoking in all public places. The law also prohibits tobacco advertising and bans the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18. The law is set to go into effect in May 2013.

High tobacco use is certainly an issue in Vietnam and throughout most of Asia. According to the World Health Organization, 40,000 people die of tobacco-related causes in Vietnam each year. The figure is expected to rise. One in three boys ages 15 – 24 smokes. The Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), an anti-smoking group, estimates that there are 15.3 million smokers in Vietnam, and nearly half of all adult males smoke.

The question now is, will this new law have any impact? A similar decree was passed in 2010, banning smoking in public, raising taxes on tobacco and restricting cigarette sales. But the decree was seen to have little effect, as public smoking and cigarette sales remain casual sights in Vietnam.

Rather than pure legislative action, regulation coupled with a greater public health awareness campaign might be the path to go.

Source: AFP

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Vietnam is the 2nd Happiest Country in the World?

Are you more likely to be happy living in Vietnam than in Switzerland, Norway, the U.S. and even Bhutan (the only country to measure “gross national happiness“)?

That’s what the results of this year’s Happy Planet Index (HPI) suggest. Designed by the New Economics Foundation (motto: “economics as if people and the planet mattered”), the HPI sets forth to be the “leading global measure of sustainable, well-being.” It ranks countries on how well they create the conditions for citizens to live long, happy, sustainable lives using three primary indicators: life expectancy, experienced well-being and Ecological footprint.

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Sức khỏe, Tin tức khác
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Health Brief: Dengue Vaccine Being Developed Around the World, including Vietnam

To many people, dengue, like cholera and tuberculosis, seems to be one of those diseases from the days of yore. This may be because dengue made its greatest marks on global history during WWII, when mass movements of troops across the Pacific Theatre facilitated the spread of the disease. But that was over 70 years ago, a time of which few of us have any living recollection. More recent outbreaks of dengue rarely draw the same media attention that outbreaks of diseases like avian flu or swine flu do, so many of us go about without any awareness of dengue.

Read More “Health Brief: Dengue Vaccine Being Developed Around the World, including Vietnam”

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World’s Most Peaceful Countries: How Peaceful is Vietnam?

The Global Peace Index, an initiative of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), recently released the 2012 Global Peace rankings. The Index compares 158 countries according to their “absence of violence” across 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators (see below). This year, Vietnam came in 34th, putting it in the first tier of the world’s most peaceful countries. Southeast Asian neighbors Malaysia (20th) and Singapore (23rd) are almost among the world’s 35 most peaceful countries.

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Phát triển kinh tế
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Economic Update: Vietnam’s Macro Future

When the world’s largest development agency speaks, the rest of the NGO/NPO community listens–whether to critique, scrutinize or get new ideas from.

Following its May update on the East Asia and Pacific region, the World Bank has released the results of the mid-year World Bank  Group-Vietnam consultative discussions and made public the newest Vietnam country cooperative strategy for 2012 – 2016. We’ve been soaking up all the information these two reports have to offer. Between the cooperation strategy and consultative discussion, there are over 200 pages of material. Much of it underscores what many us can feel instinctivelly: that after a quarter century of model development, Vietnam’s growth has slowed; that much of Vietnam’s earlier growth came at the expense of the environment and plans for sustainable must be set in motion; and that Vietnam’s human capital, infrastructure and innovation systems must be developed for it to avoid the “middle income trap.” But all is not grim–buttressed by a young workforce and a strong export portfolio (for the time being), Vietnam has plenty of potential to tap into.

So that you can avoid pouring days over the two reports, we’ve perused, combined and summarized highlights from both.

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Phát triển kinh tế, Gây quỹ, Dự án
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Project Update: It’s a Wrap! Cycle 1 of Vocational Training Comes to an End

Four months ago, a group of 30 Vietnamese youth arrived at the doors of the A Dong vocational school in Saigon (HCMC), hungry for an education and a shot at a stable livelihood. None of these youth really knew each other. Some were from right in the city, passing through A Dong’s school gates for the very first time; others came from distant villages. All were looking forward to a change in their lives, and all formed the first cohort of VNHELP’s new pilot vocational project, which aims to train disadvantaged youth to become skilled motorbike mechanics.

Read More “Project Update: It’s a Wrap! Cycle 1 of Vocational Training Comes to an End”

Giáo dục, Dự án, Xây dựng trường học
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Education Brief: Why Build A School in Vietnam?

Building schools where needed

According to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Vietnam has made major progress in education in recent years. Official figures estimate that enrollment rates in primary education have reached near universal levels, such that more children are receiving an education now than ever before.

But in our view, any one child out of school is still one child too many.

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Dự án, Trẻ mồ côi & đường phố
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Program Update: Hello from the Thien An Kids!

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, VNHELP also partners with the Thien An Institute in Can Tho to help orphans, street kids and children with difficult family circumstances. Like at Dieu Giac, each of these children are connected to a kind-hearted sponsor in the U.S. or a different country from abroad. They send letters, correspondence, photos and sometimes even get a chance to meet in person. Thank you again to our VNHELPer, Dang Le, who brought back a packet of photos for us which we’ve scanned to share with you all. And of course, thank you to the wonderful philanthropists and sponsors who are making a difference in these children’s lives. The slide show below is just a small selection of some of the children who are currently being helped through the program.

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Dự án, Trẻ mồ côi & đường phố
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Program Update: Say Hello to the Dieu Giac Kids

Since 2006, VNHELP has partnered with the Dieu Giac Orphanage in HCMC (Saigon) to provide a warm, nourishing environment to orphans and street children in Vietnam. Through our Sponsor A Child Program, we connect a compassionate donor from the U.S. to a child in need of support in Vietnam. Some of these children are orphans, some are street kids and some are admitted on a special basis when their families are unable to continue giving them proper care. We sponsor over a hundred children annually at both Dieu Giac and our additional partner, the Thien An Institute. One of our very dedicated VNHELPers, Dang Le, just returned from a personal trip to Vietnam andwas gracious enough to bring back a few photos of the kids currently sponsored through VNHELP for us. Say hello to some of the children below.

[slideshow]