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The Vietnam News

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Vietnam to export AIDS medicines

HANOI - Vietnam will export anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV/AIDS treatment to some African and Asian countries in the coming time, Vietnam News Agency reported Wednesday. The Stada Vietnam, a joint venture between a German pharmaceutical company and a local partner in southern Ho Chi MinhCity, has registered to export the drugs. Its ARV products, which have proved effective on many local patients, are 8-10 times lower than similar imports.

Using the drugs, a local patient has to spend only 260-280 US dollars for one year of treatment, the lowest expenditure in Southeast Asia, the report said. Foreign ARV drugs, which help dramatically improve the health and extend the live of people with HIV, were introduced into Vietnam in 1993, but few local patients have access to them due to their high cost. As of March 31, Vietnam had diagnosed more than 93,000 HIV carriers, of whom 14,913 developed full-blown AIDS, including 8,768 fatalities. The actual number of infections may be higher. The country has targeted to reduce the HIV/AIDS infection rate among its 82-million population to below 0.3 percent by 2010, and keep it unchanged after 2020.

XinhuaNet - September 14, 2005.