Milk support helps Vietnam’s children to stand tall
Children in rural areas across Vietnam have benefited from milk programmes aiming to improve their health and intelligence.
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More than 1,200 disadvantaged students at the B My Hiep Primary School in Cho Moi district, the Mekong Delta province of An Giang, were presented with the equivalent to 111,000 glasses of milk on August 27.
The support was provided by the Stand Tall Vietnam milk fund of the Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk).
In May, the fund also provided milk for deprived families in northern Ninh Binh province. It plans to give a four million glasses amount of milk to less privileged children nationwide in 2016.
Vinamilk said the milk will be delivered to centres for orphans and disabled children, nurseries and primary schools in remote areas.
Since its foundation in 2008, the Stand Tall Vietnam milk fund has supported more than 373,000 disadvantaged children with about 30 million glasses of milk worth VND120 billion (US$5.4 million).
Meanwhile, a milk programme approved by the Government has recorded encouraging outcomes in northern Bac Ninh province.
Luong Thi Bien, head of the preschool education division at the provincial Department of Education and Training, said the drive has been carried out in Bac Ninh since September 2013 and aided over 84,000 children at all 163 local kindergartens at present.
As a result, the rate of underweight children there has declined to 1.8%, down 1.8% from the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year.
Bien said the school milk programme has also encouraged parents to send their children to schools. Bac Ninh currently has a school enrollment rate of about 99.6%, among children aged between 3-5, one of the highest in the country.
