Vietnam is listed among the world’s top ten countries with the highest abortion rate, said the Ho Chi Minh City-based Tu Du Hospital at the 10th Vietnam-France-Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive Health in the city from May 12 to 18. The Southeast Asian country is warned of an alarming abortion rate among adolescents, the online newspaper dantri.com.vn reported Wednesday. “The number of abortion adolescents is increasing year after year,” Pham Thanh Hai, a doctor from Tu Du said, adding that his hospital recorded 512 abortion cases of adolescent in 2008, up 31.96% from 2005. Meanwhile, statistics from the HCM City Reproductive Healthcare Center showed that adolescents made up 2.4% out of 100,000 abortion cases in 2009. Having sex without full awareness about reproductive health, family and school’s confusion in the sexual education for adolescents, rampancy of online sexy movies and images were attributed to the alarming level, the experts said. Up to 11.2% of adolescents in Vietnam have sex and 34% of them do not use any contraceptive methods, the World Health Organization said.
