Drug program targets Vietnam HIV epidemic

Pharmacology

Every day, 100 people in Vietnam are newly infected with HIV, according to that country's Ministry of Health. These include injecting drug users, female sex workers and homosexuals.

In 2007 alone, an estimated 293,000 people in the South East Asian country were living with the human immunodeficiency virus.

In a bid to tackle the epidemic, the Vietnamese Government has turned to the University of Adelaide's Discipline of Pharmacology for help.

Epidemiologist Dr Ha Viet Dong, a Family Health International (FHI) program officer based in Ho Chi Minh City, has just completed a three-month placement at the University. Dr Dong returns to Vietnam this month armed with new skills in monitoring and evaluating methadone treatment programs.

Dr Dong's placement has been sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) in conjunction with Drug & Alcohol Services South Australia (DASSA).

The Discipline of Pharmacology, in association with DASSA, is a WHO-accredited Collaborative Centre for Research into the Treatment of Drug and Alcohol Problems.

Senior project officer from the WHO Centre Dr Peter Lawrinson said Vietnam's HIV/AIDS epidemic was being largely driven by blood-borne virus transmission through injecting drug use, principally heroin.

"The effective treatment of heroin dependence offered through methadone treatment programs affords an ideal opportunity to reduce the risk of HIV transmission," Dr Lawrinson said.

The Vietnamese Government launched a national methadone treatment program in March as part of a range of treatment options for dependent heroin users. Dr Dong will be among the first to evaluate its effectiveness, using his newly acquired skills.

"It is crucial that we can objectively demonstrate the benefits of methadone treatment for Vietnamese heroin-dependent people," Dr Lawrinson said.

A pilot study of the WHO Centre's evaluation kit in seven developed countries - Thailand, China, Indonesia, Poland, the Ukraine, Iran and Lithuania - showed that the methadone treatment program led to significant reductions in illicit drug use within six months.

"The drug problem is no worse in Vietnam than in most other South-East Asian countries, but compared to Australia, the rate of intravenous drug users that are HIV-positive is very high," Dr Lawrinson said.

The relatively low Australian statistics are credited to a long history of methadone maintenance treatment along with needle and syringe programs implemented in the 1980s, which curtailed an AIDS epidemic.

"Australia has only 1-2% of intravenous drug users who are HIV-positive, thanks to the harm reduction approach launched two decades ago, along with the Grim Reaper campaign."

The WHO Centre, established in 2003 at the University of Adelaide, has developed research-based collaborations with many countries throughout the world interested in evidence-based treatment.

Dr Dong is the second person to be awarded a WHO Fellowship to the Centre in the past four years.

In 2006, a female psychiatrist from Mongolia spent three months working in the Discipline of Pharmacology.

Story by Candy Gibson