Vietnam bans herbal medicine advertised as AIDS cure
HANOI - Health authorities have temporarily barred the advertising and sale of four herbal medicines manufactured by a Vietnamese company, which claimed one of them could cure AIDS, Vietnamese press reported Wednesday. Health Ministry officials took the action Tuesday against the Vietnam Natural Pharmaceutical Company, or VinaPham, after an inspection conducted together with police.
"We inspected the company's office in Hanoi yesterday," Do Duc Nhuong, deputy head of the Ministry of Health's inspection department, said Wednesday. "Today, we sent a working group to the company's factory in Hoa Binh province to inspect the factory and test the medicines."
VinaPham's banned remedies, sold under the names KiHBV, KiHCV, KiHIV and AntiCa, were reportedly made of a mixture of ginseng, lotus seeds, ginger, crocus bulbs and gelatin.
The company had taken out newspaper advertisements claiming that KiHIV could improve the circulatory, digestive, and nervous systems of people infected with the HIV virus, and could ultimately rid them of the virus after three to six months.
Inspectors said the company had not registered or licensed the remedies with the Ministry of Health, and had no approval for the content of the advertisements.
The pills sold for two dollars each to Vietnamese customers, and five dollars to foreigners.
Vietnam has a long history of Chinese-style traditional medicine, and traditional medical practitioners are licensed by the state and integrated with the national health system.
The country also has a growing AIDS epidemic, though its size is uncertain. UNAIDS estimates that between 150,000 and 430,000 of Vietnam's 84 million citizens are HIV positive.
Last week, the Ministry of Health said that only 1,000 of Vietnam's AIDS patients are receiving government-funded antiretroviral drug treatment.
Deutsche Presse Agentur - June 13, 2007.
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