Hanoi to strive to reduce ratio of people living with HIV

During a press conference held on November 24, La Thi Lan, Vice Director of the Hanoi Disease Control Center, informed that the capital recorded an additional 1,263 HIV patients during the opening ten months of the year, with male patients making up more than 78% of the total.

Accordingly, Hanoi has detected 29,931 HIV infected cases as of October 31, ranking second nationwide and making up 9.6% of overall cases in the country.

The number of people currently living with HIV/AIDS stood at 23,709, while the number of fatalities was 6,222.

The prevalence of HIV transmission through blood in Hanoi dropped, but sexually-transmitted infections rose this year. The rate of mother-to-child transmission was below 2% over the past six years.

Hanoi initially launched an ARV treatment programme in 2004, with 50 patients being treated from the project which received funded from the French Government. From the 2004 to 2018 period, the source of ARV drugs and testing services for patients receiving ARV treatment was supported by non-refundable aid from Global Fund.

Since 2019, ARV drugs and testing services have been mainly paid through health insurance.

Lan stated that moving forward, Hanoi must continue to conduct various HIV/AIDS prevention and control activities towards achieving the 90-90-90 goal by 2021. The 90-90-90 goal relates to 90% of all people living with HIV knowing their status, 90% of all people diagnosed with HIV receiving sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy having viral suppression.

She added that the capital will strive to reduce the ratio of people living with HIV in the community to less than 0.3%, therefore minimising HIV’s impact on the city's socio-economic development.

Mai Nguyen