A view of the meeting

Speaking at the event, Dang Thuan Phong, Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee on Social Affairs, said the National Assembly included the drafting of amendments and supplements to a number of articles of the Law on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the Law and Ordinance Development Programme in 2020. The draft will be submitted to the 10th seating of the 14th National Assembly for comments and then to the 11th seating for approval consideration.

The amending and supplementing of a number of articles in the Law on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control is a good opportunity for law enforcement agencies to propose new policies and solutions in response to AIDS, helping to gain achievements as well as meet goals and commitments in the near future.

According to the Ministry of Health, 115 HIV-infected people are receiving ARV treatment – the number is rising while international assistance for this activity is declining. Using health insurance as an alternative resource and ensuring all infected people have health insurance cards are considered important strategies to sustain the ARV treatment programme. However, it is struggling to implement the programme in the transitional period of using ARVs provided free-of-charge to using ARVs provided under the health insurance fund, especially in the first year of 2019. Accordingly, it is required to instruct provinces and cities to stock ARVs.  

Representatives highly appreciated achievements of the Law on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control. However, the limited access to information for HIV-infected people and funds means the work is challenging.

To improve HIV/AIDS prevention and control, it is important to have better access to information of HIV-infected people for more effective disease monitoring, testing, referral, care management and ARV treatment, at the same time, ensuring the rights to approach services of HIV/AIDS prevention and control and ARV treatment for all. The Government is asked to mobilise resources for HIV/AIDS prevention and control, raise awareness of people and implement activities to eliminate discrimination towards HIV-infected people at schools, workplaces and healthcare facilities, simplify administrative procedures in medical examination and treatment using health insurance, especially HIV/AIDS treatment via health insurance./.