Hanoi pledges specific action plan for HIV/AIDS prevention

Tuan Minh 10:22, 2018/06/23

The Hanoi People`s Committee has recently held a conference to deploy HIV/AIDS prevention to achieve ambitious goals in HIV/AIDS prevention set by the United Nations by 2020.

The conference saw the attendance of Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, Vice Chairman of Hanoi People's Committee Le Hong Son.
The city aims to achieve the 90-90-90 goals, which mean that by December 2020, 90% of HIV-infected people will know their infection status, 90% will receive anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs and 90% of people taking ARV drugs will have durable viral suppression.

At the conference

Addressing the conference, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, pointed out communication work on HIV/AIDS prevention is not spread yet, so people do not have sufficient awareness of preventing HIV/AIDS, while units lack coordination and action program.
Therefore, he asked for intensified dissemination to raise public awareness and stop discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS.
The city's Health Department should implement an action program, expand the use of methadone therapy for drug addicts and scale up HIV counselling and testing, Long suggested.
All districts of the city report people living with HIV, with those aged 25-49 accounting for 70% of the total.
The rates of newly-detected HIV infections via blood, sex and mother to child transmission in the first four months of this year were 36.9%, 63.1% and zero percent, respectively.
As of late 2017, 67.8% of HIV-infected people knew their infection status, while 53% of HIV positive people received ARV drugs.
Vietnam has seen decreases in the number of newly-detected HIV infections, the number of transmissions to full-blown AIDS and the number of AIDS-caused deaths. Each year, about 10,000 new HIV infection cases have been discovered in the country, mostly transmitted via sex.
To that end, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Le Hong Son asked offices and districts to actively carry out action plans.
"Hanoi is committed to implementing this goal with the guidance of the Ministry of Health," Vice Chairman Le Hong Son stressed.
Speaking at the conference, Ph.D Ali Safarnejad from UNAIDS Vietnam expressed his belief that with strong commitments and strong direction, the experience and achievements gained from the fight against HIV, with great support from the UN Development partners, Hanoi will definitely succeed in achieving the 90-90-90 goals, putting total efforts towards the end of the AIDS epidemic.

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