Australia and Vietnam are working together to
tackle tuberculosis (TB) in Vietnam, which has one of the highest rates of the
disease in Asia.
Mike
Ives – Australia and Vietnam are working together to tackle tuberculosis (TB)
in Vietnam, which has one of the highest rates of the disease in Asia.
An
initial US$1.3 million has been allocated for a partnership project in which
Vietnam is receiving advice from Australian TB experts to apply at all levels
of its healthcare system.
Although
the number of cases of TB has been declining worldwide since 2006, Vietnam’s
rate has been steady since the late 1990s. According to the WHO, the prevalence
of the disease is 334 per 100,000 people, 20 percent higher than the average
for Southeast Asia, and roughly double that of China.
Vietnam
needs to combine good treatment with preventive screenings of at-risk
populations to keep the incidence down, according to Greg Fox, a Vietnam-based
researcher with the Centenary Institute in Sydney, Australia.
“We
need to combine a number of different strategies,” said Fox, who is also
project coordinator at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Australia.
“One is not going to be enough.”
Since
2010, Australian researchers have been screening roughly 15,000 family members
of those afflicted with TB in eight Vietnamese provinces. Families with members
afflicted with TB were shown to have infection rates two to three times higher
than that of the general Vietnamese population.
Fox
recommends that outreach work targets other at-risk populations, such as people
living with HIV/AIDS and prisoners in Vietnamese jails, noting that infection
rates are highest in Vietnam’s southern provinces, affecting the poorest the
most.
Social
stigma prevents people living with the disease from seeking treatment, he told SciDev.Net.
Vietnamese
state media have quoted doctors as saying that about seven percent of people
infected with TB nationwide do not come in for treatment. Others do not take
precautions, such as using individual rather than communal utensils during
meals.
Nguyen
Viet Nhung, deputy head of Vietnam’s National Tuberculosis Program, said he
hopes to see positive results from the partnership within four years. But he
emphasized that its success will partly depend on how much funding it receives.
——
Source: Science & Development Network
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