At a meeting on raising awareness on population issues held yesterday in HCM City, Tran Van Tri, the division's deputy head, said that the city has carried out many reproductive-health-counselling programmes for young people at schools and neighbourhoods.

Eight clinics have been set up to provide counselling in reproductive health in some districts.

The city is in a "golden" demographic period with 70 per cent of its people being of working age and the city ranking third in the country in the human development index, he said. Its average age is 76 and birth rate is 1.48, lower than the country's rate of 2.1, he added.

Duong Quoc Trong, head of the General Office for Population and Family Planning, urged the division to pay more attention to encouraging families to have two children to preclude an ageing population.

Tri also spelled out the problems facing the city — like its population "overload."

The city had nearly eight million people last year and a population density of 3,698 per kilometre, 13 times higher than the country's.

The meeting was held to mark World Population Day on July 11.

(Source: VNS)