Key tasks for HIV/AIDS prevention figured out
VGP - A number of key tasks for AIDS, drug and prostitution prevention and control work for 2022 were figured out, including providing Methadone treatment for more than 50,000 drug addicts.
Viet Nam targets to improve HIV testing in the community and HIV self-testing, with the aim of detecting 10,000 new HIV carriers in the year.
As many as 45,000 people, especially those from high-risk groups and men who have sex with men (MSM), will be supplied with Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) and medicine to prevent getting HIV.
Meanwhile, ARV treatment will be expanded to 170,000 HIV/AIDS carriers and 95 percent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.
In 2022, the country sets the goal that 75 percent of HIV/AIDS carriers will be treated with ARV through health insurance.
Viet Nam is one of four countries with the best HIV/AIDS treatments in the world along with Germany, the UK, and Switzerland, said Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long in a meeting in 2020.
The country has been using effective prevention measures since the first HIV infection was detected in the country in 1990. Around 230,000 HIV patients are still alive, of them more than 150,000 receive anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment, he said.
Viet Nam has kept community HIV infection rates below 0.26 percent. Over the past 15 years, the nation's HIV/AIDS program has prevented 500,000 people from being infected and more than 200,000 from death caused by AIDS. The country is on track to eliminate AIDS by 2030, the Minister noted.