The Ministry of Health in VietNam develops regulations to impose special consumption tax on sugary drinks

Accordingly, the Ministry of Health in VietNam sets out the tasks of formulating nutrition-related policies to respond to emerging and urgent nutrition issues, specifically as follows:

- Develop a health insurance policy to pay for counseling services and rehabilitative treatment for children with severe acute malnutrition in the community and in hospitals; pay for pasteurized breast milk for infants, premature and pathological infants who do not have access to breast milk; nutritional products for children with metabolic disorders.

- Develop policies to incorporate essential nutrition interventions into universal health care coverage, ensuring financial resources to pay.

- Develop technical guidelines on fortification of food micronutrients.

- Develop regulations on limiting advertising, promotion and sponsorship of brands for unhealthy foods, especially for children, imposing special consumption tax on sugary drinks.

- Develop technical standards for school meals, regulations on reasonable nutrition and physical activity in schools, regulations on operation of school canteens to ensure food and beverage supply. beneficial to the health of students.

- Develop national guidelines on proper nutrition and physical activity suitable for target groups to prevent overweight, obesity and non-communicable diseases for the population.

- Develop recommendations on workers' meals suitable to their industries to disseminate and apply in production, business and industrial zones.

- Develop guidelines on nutrition counseling and breastfeeding support for employees without labor contracts.

- Develop guidelines and effectively deploy reasonable nutrition for special forces in the military.

- Develop guidelines for nutritional support for patients in the hospital.

- Develop guidelines for nutritional support in nutrition emergency response. Develop nutrition emergency response plans at central and provincial and city levels.

In addition, the Ministry of Health in VietNam also sets the task of strengthening communication about nutrition on social networks:

- Strengthening educational communication, disseminating nutrition knowledge on fanpages and on other social networking platforms such as tiktok, instagram, zalo... with content about: Nurturing young children, nutrition of school age, nutrition for the prevention of non-communicable diseases, nutrition in emergencies and epidemics; How to read and understand nutrition labels.

- Building a national electronic portal on nutrition and food, managed and operated by the Institute of Nutrition.

See details in Decision 1294/QD-BYT issued on May 19, 2022.