Hanoi (VNA)💜 – In the initial stage of the HIV epidemic in Vietnam, intravenous drug use was the main cause of virus transmission, with the infection rate among intravenous drug users reaching about 30%. At present, Vietnam is among the few countries that have managed to curb the epidemic among those users, with an infection rate of 0.4 per 100 people each year.

The information was revealed by Assoc. Prof. Phan Thi Thu Huong, Director of the Vietnam Administration for HIV/AIDS Control under the Ministry of Health, at a meeting held by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Hanoi on May 8. The event took place on the sidelines of the 49th Global Fund Board meeting. She noted that over the past years, Vietnam has carried out comprehensive interventions along with diverse and suitable HIV preventive measures for intravenous drug users, including distributing safe syringes, giving the methadone therapy, conducting mass HIV screening, and providing antiretroviral (ARV) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) therapies. One of the successful initiatives is the DRIVE (Drug Use and Blood-Borne Infections in Vietnam) research project, which has been implemented for more than 10 years to identify a package of interventions for preventing HIV transmission among people who inject drugs. The DRIVE project 2016 - 2021, funded by ANRS – a French agency for prevention of emerging infectious diseases, assessed the interventions combined with HIV treatment and prevention measures for the target group in Hai Phong city. The project found that the HIV epidemic among intravenous drug users in Hai Phong has ended, with an infection rate of less than 1 per 100 people. This city has shifted to a new strategy that suits the current HIV situation – assisting those addicts to maintain treatment and dealing with the emerging use of methamphetamine and mental health problems of drug users. The model of the DRIVE project were applied to the CHEER (Community HIV Epidemiological Evaluation and Response) programme, which assessed the HIV epidemic and carried out interventions on intravenous drug users and gays in five target provinces of the Global Fund in 2021 and 2022. Based on the DRIVE project’s results, other studies have been carried out to make interventions for Hepatitis C, psychosis, COVID-19, and tuberculosis among people injecting drugs. At the event, domestic and international experts highlighted Vietnam’s achievements in curbing the HIV epidemic among intravenous drug users. The Global Fund is among the international organisations substantially assisting Vietnam with the prevention and control of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Vietnam has received assistance from the Global Fund since 2003. So far, the fund has supplied over 650 million USD in non-refundable aid for anti-HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria activities in the country. Thanks to the support, the HIV/AIDS prevention and control programme has provided HIV preventive measures for nearly 1 million people and saved nearly 200,000 from death from AIDS. Vietnam detected the first HIV case in 1990. 2023 is the 15th consecutive year HIV/AIDS has been put under control and declined in terms of all the three criteria: the number of new HIV infections detected, the number of people reaching the stage of AIDS, and the number of AIDS-related deaths./.