HA NOI – Vo Nu Tra Mi, 11, in northern Phu Tho Province, was not wearing a helmet when she got into a motorbike accident with her mother on Monday.

The young girl suffered a serious head injury and had to undergo surgery.

Two days after the accident, she still has a swollen eye, and all her hair was shaved away for the surgery. She cannot sleep at night because of the pain.

Her mother, Nguyen Thi Kim Thu, underwent surgery for her broken legs and now she is in recovery. Thu was wearing her helmet. She now regrets that she did not make her daughter wear one as well.

“I should have made her wear a helmet. She would not have been hurt so badly with a helmet,” said Thu.

One doctor at Viet Duc Hospital, Dong Van He, said that Mi was lucky as her situation was not more serious. He advised parents to always make their children wear helmets.

“It’s better to prevent injury than to cure it,” he said.

Nearly 3,300 children suffered brain injuries in traffic accidents in 2008, according to a report by the Ministry of Health (MOH).

The statistic was announced at the Expert Consultation Workshop on Helmet Wearing for Children in Viet Nam, held yesterday in Ha Noi by the Ministry of Transport (MOT).

The workshop aimed at asking the opinions of domestic and international experts on the age at which children should be wearing helmets.

Winners of traffic safety contest chosen

HCM CITY – The Asia Injury Prevention Foundation yesterday presented awards to winners of a diary-writing and photography contest on road safety it held in HCM City last month.
Open to children aged under 14, the diary entries competition in the Traffic Safety Diary 2009 Contest required contestants to write what they see on the roads daily.
It was won by Dien Bien, Dong Ba and Hoang Van Thu primary schools.
The traffic safety photo competition was won by Dong Ba, Dien Bien and Do Luong primary schools.
The prizes were given away at a function held at the HCM City Children’s House.
The contest was organised in co-operation with the city Department of Education and Training and Traffic Safety Committee, and sponsored by Safe Kids Worldwide and drug company Johnson & Johnson.
Students from six primary schools had taken part. – VNS

All existing laws and regulations required anyone sitting on a motorbike to wear a helmet; however, there was no law for adults who carried children that were not wearing helmets, according to MOT’s Acting Director of the Department of Traffic Safety, Nguyen Van Thuan.

According to Tran Thi Ngoc Lan, deputy director of MOH’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Environment, of the nearly 50,000 incidents of brain injury caused by traffic accidents in 2008, the rate of children under 14 who had suffered was 13.4 per cent.

Statistics provided by Viet Duc Hospital in Ha Noi alone said that 560 children under 14 had suffered brain injuries in traffic accidents in the past three years.

Other research carried out by Dong Van He, doctor and head of the Science Research Faculty at Viet Duc Hospital in Ha Noi, showed that about 8.1 per cent of those children had died from their injuries.

Parental awareness on helmets for children had also played an important role in reducing the number of brain injuries, a majority of participants agreed at the workshop.

However, a number of parents remained reluctant to make their children wear helmets.

Nguyen Thi Kim Thu said that she never thought such an accident would happen, so she did not care much about her daughter’s helmet.

Meanwhile, the mother of a three-year-old son, Bach Ngoc Dung, from Ha Noi, said she was worried about making young children wear helmets.

“It will affect their necks,” she said.

However, Jonathan Passmore, a technical staffer on child injury prevention at the World Health Organisation, said there was no scientific evidence that wearing a qualified helmet could negatively affect a child’s neck bone development.

MOT has asked relevant ministries for opinions on what age children should be wearing helmets. This was included in the draft of the “Decree on fines regulation for administrative violations in road traffic”.

According to Nguyen Van Thuan, there were currently two trends of opinions: one suggested that everyone on motorbikes should be wearing helmets, while the other said that children aged six and older should have to wear helmets.

Draft decree

MOT also proposed that motorcyclists carrying children aged six to 16 without helmets be fined VND100,000 to VND200,000 (US$6-$12).

It proposed that fines be included in Decree 146/2007/ND-CP promulgated on September 14, 2007, and that they be applied beginning in July.

The Government will decide the fate of the proposal.

The proposed new regulation was intended to reinforce parental responsibility to follow traffic safety laws, said Nguyen Van Thuan.

Regarding the quality of helmets for children, Science and Technology Ministry standards written in 2004 set the weight of helmets for children at no more than 0.4 kilos. The Transport Ministry’s draft proposal would have those carrying more than a single pillion passenger fined from VND100,000 to VND200,000.

Motorcyclists caught without compulsory vehicle insurance would be fined between VND80,000-VND120,000 ($4-$7).

Illegal racers will have their motorbikes confiscated, forfeit their licences and be fined VND20 to 30 million ($1,200 – $1,700).

The draft proposal has been posted on the ministry’s website, www.mt.gov.vn. Opinions and responses can be made until June 10.

Viet Nam put its helmet regulation into action in December 2007. The regulation requires everyone sitting on a motorbike to wear a helmet.

Teachers say archaic textbooks, low salaries and poor facilities prevent them from doing their job.

Nearly all teachers in Vietnam suffer with low wages, outdated curricula and substandard facilities. But computer teachers often have it worst, even in Ho Chi Minh City.

Nguyen Thai Son, head of the HCMC University of Education’s Mathematics and Computer Department, said computer teachers could barely scratch out a living on monthly salaries of just over VND2 million (US$112.54).

Son said most of the teachers would like to take extra classes to keep up to date with the latest information technology (IT) developments, but they simply can’t afford it.

Teacher Nguyen Minh N., who teaches computer skills at a high school in Tan Phu District, said teaching the subject there is a waste of expertise as the lack of facilities and outdated academic programs make it nearly impossible for a teacher to be effective.

While the IT sector continues to develop rapidly, the curriculum never changes.

Computer teachers are forced to teach the same courses in Microsoft Word and Excel every year, N. explained.

He said that although Word 2007 was now the most popular word processor in the modern workforce, his students were still forced to do exercises on Word 2003.

He said his students complained they had been doing the same tests since the beginning of secondary school.

“It breaks my heart, but what can I do? I can’t change the academic programming.”

The teacher said another problem was that many schools often had only two small computer rooms to provide for thousands of students. Only a few computer periods are offered per week at most schools, he added.

He said he was going to quit teaching after fulfilling his three-year quota – a requirement placed on all educational training graduates – because his students just weren’t interested in the subject and he had no resources with which to inspire them.

Many teachers he knew were suffering from the same problems and had the same answer: quitting, N. said.

Son from the University of Education said his school, one of HCMC’s main suppliers of teachers, was admitting only 70 new math and computer students each year though it has a capacity to admit 90.

“Most computer science students want to become IT experts or programmers. Very few of them want to become teachers,” Son said.

Working in other IT-related fields offers high average salaries of over VND5 million ($281.31) a month, as well the opportunity for promotion, he explained.

“Recruitment of computer teachers in HCMC has been extremely low over the last few years. The city is facing a big gap and is in trouble,” said Van Cong Sang, who is in charge of personnel under the HCMC Department of Education and Training.

Music teachers silenced

And, if computer teachers have it bad, music teachers have it even worse.

Sang said the city’s schools were also suffering a dearth of music teachers due to many of the same reasons.

He said schools in HCMC often had only one music teacher and that the subject was often considered secondary, with its teachers treated accordingly.

At Nguyen Van Troi Primary School in District 4, for example, the only music teacher – Nguyen Trung Chin – is in charge of 37 classes and teaches between six and seven periods a day. He is also responsible for organizing the school’s musical festivals.

Despite the hardship, Chin said: “I don’t want a lighter schedule. If I had one, then I wouldn’t have enough money to live.”

Nguyen Thi Phuong Nga, vice principal of the HCMC National College of Education, said most music major graduates have to teach at as many schools as possible, or even work part-time performing in bars, to make enough money for a decent living.

Many music teachers are struggling with this fate, while others have found no other choice than to quit and find new jobs elsewhere

HA NOI – Rural women are at high risk of pesticide poisoning and other health damage, a new survey shows.

The Research Centre for Gender, Family and Environment in Development, CGFED, estimates from the results of the survey that as many as 20 million people, mostly women aged between 30-39, are regularly exposed to pesticides.

Its survey of more than 100 households in Bac Son, Pho Yen Commune in northern Thai Nguyen Province, where mostly tea is grown, revealed that women are exposed to an average of more than 400 pesticide canisters each year.

CGFED managing director Pham Kim Ngoc says the town’s women now work the crops because their men are away working in cities.

They mix these chemical pesticides, spray it on the crops and clean the canisters after harvest.

About 90 per cent of them do so while up to three months pregnant.

Ha Noi University of Social Sciences and Humanities representative Hoang Ba Thinh says women are directly exposed to the chemicals for 2-3 hours daily, triple that of a man.

“Each household sprays the chemical at different times of the year, so rural women face a high risk of poisoning during the entire 12 months,” he says.

Chemical poisoning

The Health Ministry’s Environment and Preventive Medicine Department statistics show that almost 70 per cent of those exposed to pesticides display symptoms typical of chemical poisoning.

Many women farmers in Bac Son suffer headaches, shortage of breath, exhaustion and vomiting or an allergy after using pesticides.

“Many kinds of pesticides can cause mental damage, malformed new-born infants, sterility and breast cancer among women,” says a department official.

But many women farmers lacked the knowledge necessary to protect themselves, despite the serious effects on reproductive health, the official says.

Bac Son resident Nguyen Thi Hoa says most farmers in her town wear protective clothing while spraying but never masks or gloves while mixing chemicals or cleaning tanks.

“It’s really inconvenient if we always have to wear gloves or masks,” she says.

The health of female farmers has been neglected as the number of women working in fields is rapidly increasing.

“The relevant authorities should focus on more programmes and training courses to educate farmers how to properly use pesticides and protect their health,” she says.