Early intervention in the first 1,000 days for child’s development

In the morning of 19 June 2014, at the headquarter of Ha Nam Provincial Women’s Union, RTCCD, Women’s Union and Ha Nam province authority co-operated the Launching Workshop of Learning Clubs for maternal health and child’s development. The project is the first phase of policy-oriented research in early intervention in the first 1,000 days for child’s development in Vietnam, developed under the colaboration of RTCCD, scientists from Monash University and Melbourne University (Australia), funded by Grand Challenges Canada (10/2013 – 9/2015).

Attending the workshop, there are representatives from Ha Nam provincial Women’s Union, Vice Director of Health Department, Vice Director of Ha Nam provincial preventive health centre, Vice Chairman of Ha Nam People’s Committee Tran Hong Nga, Chairman of Ha Nam Science and Technique Organization Nguyen Nhu Lam. Besides, representatives of Communal Women’s Union, Health Centre and People’s Committee of 3 communes randomly selected into the pilot model; representatives of Women’s Unions of Doi Son, Nhan Thinh, Liem Can District and reporters from provincial television.

After the welcome speech of Ha Nam Provincial Women’s Union and Vice Chairman of Ha Nam People’s Committee, three representations were delivered by Professor Jane Fisher, Doctor Tran Tuan and Ms. Tran Ha, MPH.

Prof. Jane Fisher pointed out the importance and important links between perinatal mental health and early childhood development. Recent scientific evidence and intervention models in low income countries such as South Africa, Jamaica, Pakistan were analysed to demonstrate that the research in Ha Nam comes with international trend.

Dr. Tran Tuan presented the findings from research conducted by RTCCD – Melbourne University – Monash University – Ha Nam Health Department and Provincial preventive health centre during 2006-2013. These scientific findings highlighted 8 factors preventing child’s development in Ha Nam, due to poor perinatal maternal health and child care in families.

Factors influencing child’s development due to poor perinatal maternal health includes: blood deficiency (10.8%), Iodine deficiency (92%), experience of violence (19%), mental disorders such as depression-anxiety (11.2%) and under-nutrition (32%).

Poor child care in families includes the following figures: Mistakes in daily child nurishment (39.9% of 6 month old children in Ha Nam not provided average structured meals according to WTO’s recommendation; On the average, 6 month old boys lack 13% energy of daily meal, and girls lack 7%); Antibiotics excession for child’s illness treatment (86.8% of the children having taken antibiotics over 6 times since birth until the age of 3, 61.7% having taken more than 3 times in the last 3 months) and mistakes in mental health care and child’s intelligence development (70.2% of 2 year olds were scolded, 9.8% were said to be lazy, mischivious, stupid; 10.1% were hit at the bottoms by ropes, hard tools; 2.4% were hit on cheeks, heads, or ears; 0.3% were hit constantly by ropes, belts or hard tools in the last 4 weeks).

Dr. Tran Tuan persuaded the audience by diagrams showing the analysed results from modern mathematic methods to prove the level of influence of each factor to the child’s cognitive, motor, emotional-social development in different age groups. According to those studies and after analysing socio-economic development in Ha Nam province, the science team presented the intervention model to address the mentioned problems by developing the policy-oriented research in the first 1,000 days for child’s development. The project “Learning clubs for maternal health and child’s development” was sent to “Saving Brains” competition held by Grand Challenges Canada in February 2013, and became one out of 12 funded projects (selected from 300 applied projects from all over the world).

After Dr. Tran Tuan’s presentation, Ms. Tran Ha, MPH., Coordinator of the project provided detail information on the major project purposes after 2 years of implentation, design of intervention model, 5 action modules, 24 project sessions, project operating and monitoring system, project timeline by September 2015 and long-term plan by 2020.

The launching workshop of “Learning Clubs for maternal health and child’s development” project successfully ended with the committement statements from Ha Nam Provincial Preventive Health Centre, Communal People’s Committee and Women’s Union for project implementation and support to sustain the Learning Clubs activities. At this event, 3 brand new laptops and 3 modern projectors to support the Learning Clubs were also directly provided to the local Women’s Union by RTCCD.

Workshop Photos: