| Â | | Â |  | Â | Avian Flu
Vietnam has been one of the hardest hit of East Asian countries with 93 confirmed cases and 42 deaths. The three key development objectives in support of Vietnam’s National Action Plan are to strengthen disease surveillance and diagnostic capacity; strengthen the poultry sector infrastructure to better cope with outbreaks; and safeguard human health by improving public awareness and information.Â
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|  | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Decentralization
While Vietnam became a centrally planned communist state after the war with the United States ended, economic reforms in the 1990s have helped drive the creation of a subnational government framework. Though the center still exerts substantial control, the subnational governments have some discretion.Â
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Education
Key priorities for Vietnam are provision of basic education to remote and marginalized children and improved teaching quality throughout the system; increase support to universities with additional cutting-edge and high-value interventions in tertiary education and support for the knowledge economy; and continuation of support to basic education that addresses both poverty alleviation and qualitative issues.
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Energy and Mining
Rapid commercial growth, rising living standards, and migration to urban areas are expected to drive Vietnam’s power demand growth at 13 - 15 percent per year until 2010. Also, electricity access has increased dramatically in Vietnam, from around 51 percent households in 1995 to around 81 percent in 2003.
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Environment
Vietnam’s environment is under considerable stress from rapid economic growth, urbanization and rising human pressure on relatively scarce natural resources. While it has gradually improved its environmental regulatory framework, Vietnam has very limited capacity for implementation. It is therefore feared that continued rapid growth will cause further environmental degradation.
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| | | Â | | | Â |  | Â | Health Nutrition & Population
Vietnam has achieved levels in basic health indicators that are remarkably better than other developing countries with similar or even higher per capita incomes. Much of this achievement has been the result of widespread practices of promoting social solidarity and a relatively egalitarian distribution of wealth and income.
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| | Â | | Â |  | Â | Gender
With one of the highest rates of economic participation of women in the world, Vietnam is one of the more advanced countries with respect to gender equality. However, the progress is not entirely uniform, and it faces new challenges as the country moves to a more open market economy.
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|  | | Â | | Â |  | Â | HIV/AIDS
Since the early 1990s, the World Bank has been actively involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS in East Asia and Pacific through lending, policy dialogue, and research and analysis. Vietnam presents a clear example of a country in which the trajectory of a concentrated HIVIAIDS epidemic may be greatly curtailed by a highly focused program aimed at stopping HIV/AIDS transmission. There are two active projects in Vietnam with HIV/AIDS components.
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Labor & Social Protection
Vietnam has succeeded in translating economic growth into poverty reduction in recent years. Despite low per capita GDP the country enjoys infant mortality rates, life expectancy, and adult literacy levels at par with richer countries likeChina and Thailand. However, over one third of the population is poor or near-poor, and inequality and marginalization of certain vulnerable groups have increased.
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| | | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Rural Development
Ninety percent of the poor in Vietnam, or three quarters of the population, live in the rural areas which is why rural development and agriculture are critical to Vietnam’s development.Â
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Social Development
Ongoing activities in the social development program in the country include building on successful experiences using community-based approaches to include decentralized delivery mechanisms in a range of projects, and furthering the gender equality agenda. A review of participatory community-based projects in the country identified key design principles for future projects and furthering policy dialogue. In addition, the gender assessment will provide the basis for discussions with the government on the rollout of the joint land-titling pilot project throughout the country, for example, thereby enhancing women's access to credit and security of tenure.
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| | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Transport
The transport sector has contributed positively to the economic growth of Vietnam over the past decade and has helped reduce poverty directly through better linkages to markets, education and health facilities and indirectly through its contribution to growth. Nevertheless, the transport sector faces several challenges such as the high traffic accident rates, new capacity constraints, and a large increase in asset preservation requirements to meet the fast expansion of transport assets.Â
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| | | | Â | | Â |  | Â | Urban Development
Vietnam’s cities and towns account for about 70 percent of total economic output. Economic opportunities in urban areas are propelling rapid growth in the urban population with significant rural to urban migration.
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