More than 50,000 HIV cases in Vietnam
HANOI - More than 50,000 Vietnamese people have the HIV virus
while another 7400 have AIDS, official government figures
released Wednesday said.
However an official with the National Committee for AIDS
Prevention, the organisation that released the data, told AFP as
many as 150,000 Vietnamese suffered from HIV.
The official said most of the infected people were male and drug
addicts. According to the committee's figures, there are 50,856
people with HIV cases in Vietnam, 7,418 have AIDS and 4,004
people in total have died of the virus.
The chairman of the National Committee on AIDS Prevention,
Professor Chung A, told AFP earlier this year that Vietnam's
health ministry could only afford to treat less than 1,000 patients
a year at the prices charged by Western pharamaceutical
manufacturers.
Vietnam has to pay between 8,000 and 12,000 dollars a year for
sufficient retroviral drugs to treat 20 to 30 patients, an impossible
sum for the nation's coffers.
The Health Ministry is expected to submit to the government this
month a plan for domestic production of AIDS drugs.
So far, Vietnam's pharamaceutical manufacturers have produced
on trial eight categories of anti-HIV/AIDS drugs.
The World Trade Organisation last year weakened the drug
companies' grip on patents by agreeing in principle that countries
with a pharmaceutical industry could manufacture generics in the
event of a national health crisis.
Agence France Presse - July 04, 2002.
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