The country fully ensures rights of women and children in families, society, education and public health through the law on public health, the law on family, the law on nursing and upbringing of children and the law on women's rights.

The DPRK government has increased investment for women's re-productive health improvement to steadily reduce the mortality of parturient women and newborns.

The government's 2010-2015 strategic plan for public health development and the 2011-2015 strategy for re-productive health contain ways for attaining the fourth and fifth parts (newborns' health and women's health) of the new millennium development goals and improving medical service.

The government has also paid much effort to bettering living conditions of the aged, providing unpolluted environment and preventing urbanization.

It is developing cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund.

Five-year cooperation (2011-2015) is now under way with the fund, during which medical apparatuses and medicines will be supplied to hospitals in South Phyongan, Kangwon and South Hamgyong Provinces.

On the World Population Day, July 11, a section chief of the Population Centre, Yang Song Il, told KCNA that the centre would make contributions to implementing the action program of the International Population Development Congress and the new millennium development goals.