HANOI, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has more than 7 million people with disabilities, accounting for about 7 percent of its population and most of them are of working age and poor, local media reported on Wednesday.
Among them, 28.9 percent suffer from severe disabilities with 342,329 families and individuals currently in care and receiving social welfare, local newspaper Vietnam News reported.
Statistics show that most disabled people are employed within their own families in farming, forestry and fishing sectors, the newspaper said.
More than 1.1 million disabled people have received monthly social allowances and free health insurance cards, the newspaper reported.
Over 28.73 trillion Vietnamese dong (1.22 billion U.S. dollars) was earmarked from the state budget last year on support to social allowance beneficiaries, and another 480 billion dong for the roll-out of support policies towards disabled people in terms of education, according to Pham Thi Hai Ha, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs' Department of Social Protection.
Apart from the state budget, many organizations and associations have mobilized resources from different economic sectors in order to improve living standards for disabled people, the newspaper said. ■
