HIV patient who is using ARV drugs checked health (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Hanoi is making efforts to achieve the 90-90-90 goals inHIV/AIDS prevention set by the United Nations by 2020.
The 90-90-90 goals mean that by 2020, 90percent of HIV-infected people will know their infection status, 90 percentwill receive anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs and 90 percent of people taking ARVdrugs will have durable viral suppression.
To that end, Vice Chairman of the municipalPeople’s Committee Le Hong Son asked offices and districts to actively carryout action plans.
According to him, communication work onHIV/AIDS prevention is not spread yet, so people do not have sufficientawareness of preventing HIV/AIDS, while units lack coordination and actionprogrammes.
Therefore, he asked for intensifieddissemination to raise public awareness and stop discrimination against peoplewith HIV/AIDS.
The Health Department should implement aprogramme of action, expand the use of methadone therapy for drug addicts andscale up HIV counselling and testing, he suggested.
Deputy head of the Health Department HoangDuc Hanh said that as of April 30, Hanoi reported nearly 20,000 people livingwith HIV/AIDS, ranking second in the nation and accounting for nearly 10percent of the nation’s total cases.
All districts of the city have people livingwith HIV, with those aged 25-49 accounting for 70 percent of the total.
The rates of newly-detected HIV infectionsvia blood, sex and mother to child transmission in the first four months ofthis year were 36.9 percent, 63.1 percent and zero percent, respectively.
As of late 2017, 67.8 percent ofHIV-infected people knew their infection status, while 53 percent of HIVpositive people received ARV drugs.
2017 is the 10th consecutive year thatVietnam has seen decreases in the number of newly-discovered HIV infections,the number of transmissions to full-blown AIDS and the number of AIDS-causeddeaths. Each year, about 10,000 new HIV infection cases were discovered in thecountry, mostly transmitted via sex.-VNA
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