Newborn babies at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

The General Office for Population and Family Planning announced Wednesday a pilot program to prevent gender imbalance in favor of males at birth.

The program will be carried out in 852 communes of 10 provinces with ratios of 115:100 or above. The provinces are Bac Ninh, Bac Giang, Hai Duong, Thanh Hoa, Ha Tinh, Binh Dinh, Ninh Thuan, Tien Giang, Dong Nai and Bac Lieu.

The first stage of the program, from now until 2010, funded with VND7 billion (US$393,000), will focus on supplying information and increasing awareness, including improper use of ultrasound diagnosis to determine the sex of the fetus.

Detailed plans for the rest of the program will be formulated after an analysis of the latest national census results. The census began on April 1 this year.

The program was announced at a conference to discuss actions against gender imbalance at birth held by the General Office for Population and Family Planning (GOPFP) in Hanoi Wednesday.

Medical services blamed

Experts have attributed the imbalance ratio to the traditional preference for male children in Vietnamese society and blamed diagnostic and other services for facilitating the identification and abortion of female fetuses.

“Many doctors supply the service to find out the gender of the fetus, and it’s difficult to catch them red-handed,” said GOPFP Deputy Head Duong Quoc Trong.

Trong said the increasing number of women from many localities getting married to husbands abroad has also contributed to the imbalance.

Nguyen Dinh Bach, the department’s deputy chief inspector, squarely blamed diagnostic labs for facilitating the use of sonographs, blood tests, amniotic fluid tests and other services for determining the sex of a fetus.

“Moreover, the proliferation of information on choosing the gender of future babies on websites and in books have contributed to the issue,” he said.

He said an inspection last month in Hanoi, HCMC, Hai Phong and Thanh Hoa had found more than 30,000 books of 27 titles on the subject. The books were confiscated and seven websites told to remove such articles.

Do Quang Vinh, head of Agency for Population and Family Planning of Thanh Hoa Province, also criticized medical services that help couples to identify fetal gender and abort undesired ones.

He said the population department should focus more awareness programs for doctors and medical workers, because concerned agencies mistakenly assume that these people are well aware of the importance of maintaining gender balance.

It’s even more important to encourage them to stop supplying illegal diagnostic services than raising awareness among residents, he said.

Reported by Lien Chau