Giving treatment to TB patients

Headed by Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam, the committee is designed to have a maximum of 20 members. Its operation will be supported by the same apparatus that has been running projects for the National Committee for AIDS, Drugs and Prostitution Prevention and Control.

According to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhung, head of the National TB Prevention Programme and Director of the National Lung Hospital, Vietnam is in the world’s top 30 countries with high TB burden. The country ranks 16th in the number of TB patients and 13th in the rankings of drug-resistant TB patients. Seventy percent of the TB patients are of working age (between 15 and 55).

Thanks to the national strategy on TB prevention by 2020 with a vision toward 2030 and advanced diagnosis system, the number of TB cases recorded in Vietnam has so far dropped dramatically.

In the past decade, the figure fell by 31 percent, average 3.8 percent each year.

The World Health Organisation said that Vietnam is on the right track to end TB by 2030.-VNA