The rapid diagnostic machine donated to the Vietnamese side (Photo: VNA)The donation, insupport of Vietnam’s goal to end TB by 2030, includes 38 rapid diagnosticmachines with 90,000 compatible test kits and 10 digital X-ray devices to bedistributed to district health facilities across the country, including in theremote provinces of Nghe An, Lai Chau, An Giang, and Dong Thap, which have highburden of TB and multidrug-resistant TB.
Italso includes drugs to treat 15,000 patients with latent TB infection for threemonths, to be distributed nationwide.
Boththe rapid diagnostic machines and the X-ray devices are designed to operate inhard-to-reach areas. The rapid diagnostic machines, called Truenat, can performon-the-spot detection of TB and drug-resistant TB in less than two hours andare battery powered. The digital X-ray devices are ultra-portable, withcomputer-aided TB detection software to assist in areas where radiologists maynot be present.
USAID Vietnam Mission Director Ann Marie Yastishoc (centre) hands over the donation to the National Lung Hospital of Vietnam (Photo: VNA)TBis preventable and curable. However, Vietnam is among the top 30 countries withthe highest TB burden in the world, with 172,000 people developing TB and morethan 10,000 people dying from TB every year.
Theimpacts of COVID-19 have severely reduced TB care and services, with TBdetection in Vietnam decreasing by 23.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2021.To address this, USAID is also supporting theintegration of TB screening within the Vietnamese Government’s COVID-19vaccination campaigns./.
VNA
