View of the conference

That is the judgment of Mr. Eamonn Murphy, United Nations Coordinator of the United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) Asia Pacific at the 20-year Conference on HIV/AIDS Treatment in Vietnam that the Department of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control and the Ministry of Health held on December 4th, 2019 in Hanoi.

The report at the conference showed that, with the efforts of the Government and strong support from international organizations, by the end of September 2019, the whole country was providing ARV antiretroviral drugs to over 142,000 people infected with HIV, an increase of nearly 280 times compared to 2004. On average, more than 10,000 people living with HIV are receiving ARV each year. The number of waiting days from the time of registration for treatment until ARV has been reduced from over 350 days in 2011 to 0 days in 2018. HIV-infected people have been on ARV during the day with the time since HIV positive screening test until confirmed HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy takes only 6.5 hours at some places. Up to 90 days of ARV dispensing has been administered to stable infected ARV patients.

To ensure sustainable ARV treatment in the context of reduced external funding and ending in 2020, Vietnam has been shifting its replacement from aid to health insurance funds. Regarding this activity, Mr. Eamonn Murphy, Director of the United Nations Joint Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) Asia Pacific said: “Vietnam is proving to the whole of Asia Pacific one new way to move forward, with the introduction of ARV treatment into health insurance, which is an important point for the goal of universal health care. There may still be challenges in continuing to scale, but we have to approach the last people to leave no one leff behind."

Responding to the rapid reduction of international aid, especially with ARV drugs, Vietnam has promptly shifted the ARV treatment model from its funded project programs to health insurance payments.

Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nguyen Hoang Long, Director of the Department of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control, said: Out of 142,000 patients on ARV, we successfully converted over 42,000 patients in just 6 months, from May 3/2019 to 9/2019. “This is the success that many countries in the world want to learn. We will continue to switch to health insurance according to the roadmap of aid cuts to ensure that without the aid, patients will continue to receive adequate and continuous ARV treatment”.

At the Conference, participants discussed lessons learned in providing treatment and care services for PLHIV, acknowledged the problems and challenges, based on which identified measures to expand access, improve service quality and ensure the sustainability of the HIV/AIDS treatment program. Based on local practical activities, units and delegates proposed appropriate solutions to achieve the goal of ending the AIDS epidemic in Vietnam by 2030./.