Although Vietnam has been achieving great improvements in maternal health care, the maternal mortality rate (MMR), the critical indicator for reproductive health, is still high and there are big discrepancies among regions, with the ethnic minorities in mountainous areas having the highest proportion. The main causes for high MMR in Vietnam are haemorrhage (31.7 percent), eclampsia (16.9 percent) and sepsis (14.3 percent). Importantly, in many cases, these causes of MMR are preventable. There are several strategies recornmended by the World Health Organization to reduce MMR. It is of critical importance to review reproductive health related policies in Vietnam.