Đinh Văn Lượng, director of the National Lung Hospital.— Photo vietnamplus.vn

Could you tell us what the current tuberculosis epidemiological situation is like in Việt Nam?

The Global Tuberculosis Report 2022 of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says Việt Nam is still a country with a high tuberculosis burden with 169,000 people infected with tuberculosis and 14,000 people dying of tuberculosis each year.

Notably, 63 per cent of normal tuberculosis patients, 98 per cent of drug-resistant tuberculosis patients and their families face catastrophic costs, meaning the cost of tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment exceeds 20 per cent of their income every year. There are 70 per cent of people with tuberculosis are of working age.

Tuberculosis is really a problem that affects the economy of each family and the country in general. Investing in ending tuberculosis is investing in sustainable development. Ending tuberculosis in Việt Nam means avoiding the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people every year and then hundreds of thousands of families do not have to worry because someone is infected with tuberculosis.

What has the National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Programme done to enhance its effectiveness?

The National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Programme has promoted the synchronous implementation of tuberculosis prevention interventions since 2022 to maximise the number of tuberculosis patients, who are detected, diagnosed and treated, cutting off the source of infection in the community, and restoring tuberculosis detection activities immediately after the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The success is due to the application of new techniques, implementation of activities and interventions associated with the grassroots health system in order to enhance the quality of diagnosis and treatment while maintaining sustainable tuberculosis prevention.

The National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Programme and National Lung Hospital have improved capacity and enhanced the role of grassroots healthcare in detecting, diagnosing, and treating tuberculosis through technology transfer, techniques, training, and professional development for tuberculosis prevention officers at all levels this year. This is an important factor for high-quality tuberculosis examination and treatment services to reach the people. Combining dissemination and education about tuberculosis for people will help ensure tuberculosis can be completely cured like other respiratory diseases.

Boosting dissemination of the message that tuberculosis can be completely diagnosed and cured will contribute to reducing stigma and discrimination against tuberculosis patients in the community, increasing the community's initiative in accessing medical examination and treatment of tuberculosis. This is the key factor to quickly reduce the tuberculosis epidemic, aiming to end tuberculosis in Việt Nam.

The successful application of advanced techniques for screening, early diagnosing and developing new tuberculosis treatment regimen has helped to reduce the burden of tuberculosis in Việt Nam much faster than the world’s average level. The number of tuberculosis patients detected in the past months of this year has also increased significantly, even much higher than when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred.

Recently, the National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Programme launched an upgraded version of the Việt Nam Tuberculosis Information Management Electronic System (VITIMES). What does this upgrade mean?

VITIMES is a tuberculosis information management and surveillance system, developed and implemented by the National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Programme since 2010. Currently, VITIMES has been deployed in 63 provinces, cities and more than 900 medical facilities at district level and equivalent nationwide with the main function of managing important reports and data on tuberculosis, serving monitoring, supervision, scientific research, planning and decision making.

However, the current data on VITIMES is mainly about susceptible tuberculosis, lacking components on drug-resistant tuberculosis, latent tuberculosis, contact management as well as lack of connection and data exchange with other systems such as the data system of social insurance sector, hospital management software, electronic information system of the HIV Programme or test data management software of the programme.

Upgrading VITIMES is very necessary because it will help the programme to consolidate and standardise the information monitoring and management system, ready to connect and exchange data with many other systems in the future. The data of the programme is centrally managed on a system that will facilitate the management, provision and analysis of data, helping to make decisions more timely and accurately.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will continue to work together to ensure that all levels of the tuberculosis prevention and control system, from the central level to province, district and commune levels, have enough capacity to reach vulnerable community groups and providing high quality medical services to those in need of support. The upgraded version of VITIMES is a testament to USAID's commitment to supporting Việt Nam in maintaining tuberculosis control. — VNS