Social News 24/3 Transport ministry promises wider airport in Huế   Aircraft of a local carrier lands at Phú Bài Airport in Huế. - Photo baothuathienhue.vn The Ministry of Transport has agreed to upgrade an airport in Thừa Thiên-Huế Province, aiming to boost the development of this central locality and its neighbours. At a meeting between the ministry and provincial authorities in Hà Nội on Wednesday, Transport Minister Nguyễn Văn Thể said Phú Bài Airport in the province was in the list of airports that would receive investment for upgradation during 2018-20. Thể said the process for upgradation was being undertaken according to a master plan earlier approved by the Prime Minister to boost the development of the province, including the expansion of the airport. According to Nguyễn Văn Cao, chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, increasing arrivals of flights in the airport has exceeded its capacity, overloading it last year. Cao said the airport’s infrastructure needed an urgent upgrade and more runways to ease the load. He also said the airport needed a separate terminal for international arrivals. Phú Bài Airport has an annual capacity of 1.5 million passengers, but last year it welcomed 1.75 million passengers. The annual growth in passenger volume from 2014 to 2017 was 15 per cent, and Cao expected it to reach 17 per cent in the coming year. According to him, Huế is a tourism hotspot and five million visitors are expected by 2020, which makes upgradation a must. Last year, the local tourism sector demanded the People’s Committee to construct more runways to meet the increasing demand and ease the load. Hoa Lư Volleyball Cup begins in Ninh Bình Six men’s volleyball teams took part in the Hoa Lư Volleyball Cup held in the northern province of Ninh Bình on March 22. Group A comprised Thể Công, High Command of Border Guard and Vĩnh Long, while Group B consisted of Tràng An Ninh Bình, the Military Zone 4 and Sanet Khánh Hòa. The teams are competing in the round-robin format. The two best teams of each group will play at the semi-finals. The winner will walk away with prize money of VNĐ60 million (US$2,600). The event will offer teams the chance to hone their skills and prepare for the National Volleyball Championship to be held next month.  National Chinese chess event starts in Vũng Tàu The National Chinese Chess Championship began in Vũng Tàu City on March 22. The event, co-organised by the Department of Culture and Sports of Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu Province and the Việt Nam Chess Federation, will see the participation of 100 players from 12 teams across the country, including Hà Nội, Bình Dương, Bình Định, Bình Phước and Khánh Hòa. Participants are competing in the men’s and women’s standard, rapid and blitz categories. Fans will have a chance to see the country’s leading chess players at the event, including Lại Lý Huynh of Bình Dương and Trịnh A. Sáng and Nguyễn Hoàng Yến of HCM City. The championship will end on March 31. Hòa Bình General Hospital resumes dialysis after scandal Hòa Bình General Hospital has resumed kidney dialysis for patients after suspending the procedure following the death of eight persons in May last year. Lê Xuân Hoàng, deputy director of the hospital, said the Ministry of Health had donated 10 dialysis machines, while the Institute of Environmental Health donated a multifunctional testing machine for the hospital’s artificial kidney department. Currently, the hospital has 12 functional dialysis machines. Hà Nội-based Bạch Mai Hospital has sent a team of doctors, nurses and technicians from its artificial kidney department to support Hoà Bình General Hospital in the first two weeks of operation, Hoàng said. After the hospital resumed its kidney dialysis, 12 patients have come forward for treatment. Another 24 patients will be treated today and 35 more will be treated from March 24. Hoàng Công Tính, head of intensive rehabilitation ward of the artificial kidney department at the Hoà Bình General Hospital, said 129 patients have been admitted to the hospital for dialysis. With the current number of patients, the hospital needs 22 dialysis machines. In the coming time, the department will strive to improve the quality of treatment for patients, Tính said. Last May, 18 patients underwent kidney dialysis at the Hòa Bình General Hospital, following which they suffered from nausea, abdominal pain and shortness of breath.  Eight of them died of suspected anaphylactic shock. The remaining 10 patients were transferred to Hà Nội’s Bạch Mai Hospital and have recovered. This is one of the country’s most serious cases of medical negligence. Tests have revealed that the water used for kidney dialysis failed to meet safety standards. Water samples from dialysis machines No 10 and 13 had a low level of potential hydrogen and high conductivity; the fluoride level in these machines were 245 and 260 times higher, respectively, than the permissible limit of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). The other dialysis machines tested also had higher fluoride levels than permitted. According to AAMI, the maximum fluoride level allowed in the kidney dialysis water is 0.2mg per litre. Three persons, including Bùi Mạnh Quốc, director of Trâm Anh Water Treatment Co Ltd, Trần Văn Sơn, an employee from the hospital’s medical equipment department, and nephrologist Hoàng Công Lương have been prosecuted in the case. Fund to mobilise finances for TB patients The health sector today called on local and international communities for supporting tuberculosis (TB) patients at a ceremony to launch the TB Patients Support Fund in Việt Nam. The event was organised by the National TB Control and Prevention Programme under the National Lung Diseases Hospital to mark World TB Day (March 24). The fund aims to mobilise financial sources for the health sector to provide more treatment opportunities for TB patients in the country, especially poor patients, in an effort to minimise TB transmission in the community. “Together, let’s save the lives of thousands of patients dying from TB every year in Việt Nam and prevent TB infection for each one of us,” said programme director Nguyễn Viết Nhung. Nhung said it was a sad paradox that many people continued to be diagnosed with TB despite the advancement of medical science and invention of technologies and facilities to detect and treat TB over the past years. “Tuberculosis remains the leading cause of fatality in the world, leading to the deaths of nearly two million people every year. Resistant tuberculosis has threatened global health. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that there are nearly 130,000 new cases of tuberculosis diagnosed each year, resulting in some 16,000 deaths in Việt Nam by 2015,” said Nhung. He further said the fund would mobilise finances to buy and provide health insurance cards to poor TB patients in an effort to minimise their cost of treatment. “Ending tuberculosis in Việt Nam means avoiding the desperate deaths of 13,000 people every year. It also means that hundreds of thousands of families will no longer have to worry about someone having TB in future, including relatives of each one of us,” Nhung said. To mark World TB Day, the National TB Control and Prevention Programme launched a writing contest nationwide on the theme “Let’s together end TB in Việt Nam”. The Government has issued a National Strategy for Tuberculosis Control until 2020 with a vision to 2030. The goal is to gradually end TB in the country by reducing infection by 30 per cent and deaths by 40 per cent during 2015-20. According to WHO, there had been a decrease of TB cases from 128,000 to 126,000 in 2015-16. TB-related deaths reduced from 16,000 to 13,000 in this period, which translates to a reduction of infection cases by 2,000 and deaths by 3,000. Gender gaps remain wide in income and employment: ILO The report “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends for Women 2018”, recently released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), shows that Vietnam is among the group of countries with the highest female labour force participation in the world, significantly contributing to the development of the national economy. However, female workers are still faced by numerous barriers in employment and income. According to the report, Vietnam’s female labour force participation is 72%, higher than the average rate in the world (49%), as well as the Asia-Pacific region and the group of lower-middle income countries. The number of female labourers in Vietnam accounts for 48.4% of the total labour force. However, the percentage of employed Vietnamese women is 9% lower than that of men. Currently, there are 7.8 million female employees working in the informal sector with unsecured working conditions. The rate of female labourers in informal and vulnerable work is at 59.6%, while the figure is 31.8% for men. The report also points out the fact that female labourers are at a lower status than men in the employment structure. Women account for only 26.1% of the leadership positions but contribute 52.1% of the unskilled workers and 66.6% of the household workers. This shows that there are still many barriers for women in gaining access to career development opportunities compared to men. Female workers are usually the first choice when businesses want to cut costs and downsize their employees, citing many reasons, such as unsecured health and the lack of conditions to improve skills, resulting in low labour productivity. Furthermore, the report reveals that up to 57.3% of unemployed women are in the group of untrained labourers and 50.2% are in the group of workers with vocational training. Notably, the share of female labourers with tertiary education in the unemployed group is at 55.4%, which indicates that the employment access among female labourers is much more difficult compared to men in almost all qualification quintiles, especially the lowest and the highest quintiles. The reality in Vietnam shows that female labourers have to work in poorer conditions than those of the opposite sex. Only 49.8% of female labourers in the group of salariats have signed labour contracts with their employers, while the percentage is 58.8% among men. In addition, in the sector of foreign-invested companies, the proportion of male labourers signing contracts of indefinite duration is at 73.91% in comparison to only 67.67% for females. Labour experts say that gender inequality not only causes mental and physical damage to female labourers but also affects their families and society as a whole. According to a 2017 survey in the electronics assembly industry in the northern province of Bac Ninh, where female workers occupied 90% of the workforce, 71.8% of the female employees had to work over 30 hours a month and 54.5% worked more than 45 hours a month. At present, overtime income accounts for 32% of the total income and more than 50% of the average basic wage of labourers in the electronics industry. In other words, without working extra time, female employees would not be able to earn enough to cover their essential living needs. According to a study carried out by Oxfam Vietnam in 2015, the female labourers working in industrial zones and export processing zones are migrant workers. As a result, migrant workers and their children have difficulty in accessing fundamental social security services. Specifically, up to 71% of migrant workers do not have access to public health services at their destinations, and 21.2% of the children aged between 6-14, who follow their parents to destinations, do not go to school. This is an alarming number concerning the situation of children failing to access the educational system. Only 7.7% of migrant children go to public kindergartens, and 12% of migrant children go to public preschools. The rest depend on private kindergartens or home-based child care groups. According to Deborah Greenfield, ILO Deputy Director-General for Policy, although gender equality policies in Vietnam have made significant progress and commitments aiming to further bridge the gender gap, the employment prospect for women is far from equal with men. In addition, labour experts have stated that the persistent challenges and obstacles for women will reduce the ability of societies to build economic growth paths along with social development. Therefore, eliminating gender gaps in employment should be a top priority if we want to achieve gender equality and empowerment for all women and girls by 2030. VNN