Particularly, the fatality rate among babies under 12 months has reduced to approximately 25 per thousand, said Le Thi Thu, the Commission's chairwoman.

As a practical goal, each couple in Vietnam will have an average of two children by 2015, thus eventually helping the country to stabilise the size of its population by the mid 21st century.

Vietnam has moved its population targets from and family planning and birth control to improving the quality of people's life and ensuring the child-bearing rate at the stable replacement level in order to ensure an appropriate population size, of which each individual enjoying a proper and comprehensive development.

Over the past 45 years, the Party and the State have formulated many policies and resolutions aiming to speed up the implementation of population and family planning programmes. The first decision on guiding the practice of birth-control was issued by the Prime Minister on December 26, 1961 when the majority of the world did not still pay much attention to the population issue.

Accordingly, the birth rate in Vietnam has reached the replacement level from a high rate of six children per married woman of child-bearing age in 1960.

The concerted efforts made by the Party, the State and the whole community in the population task over the past years have been supported by international organisations, particularly the United Nations Population Fund, which presented Vietnam a certificate of merit in 2000. (VNA)