HCM CITY — Deputy director of the HCM City’s Department of Health Nguyễn Hữu Hưng on Wednesday instructed city districts to speed up the opening of new general healthcare clinics for patients with HIV.

International aid agencies will stop offering free ARV medicine in the country for patients with HIV next year.

Insured anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment for HIV patients will begin in June next year once international aid stops, according to the Việt Nam Administration of HIV/AIDS Control.

Seventy-two per cent of patients with HIV have health insurance, Hưng said, adding that the city’s People’s Committee had approved funds for the remaining 27 per cent of patients with HIV who cannot afford cards. 

“Who will treat them? How will we carry out?” Hưng said. “This is the issue to which we should pay more attention.”

Many representatives of district-level health centres have complained that they have not been able to set up a general clinic because of a shortage of doctors.

Dr Phạm Thị Kim Hoa, head of Cần Giờ District Health Centre, said there were not enough available staff to set up the clinics.

Around 110 patients with HIV are being treated at the district’s Community Counselling and Assistance Centre, Hoa said, adding that the centre has sent eight of the 110 patients with HIV to the district’s health stations.

The remaining number of patients with HIV have been sent to the district hospital for treatment, but the hospital has not provided treatment, even though the city’s Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention has provided training to the hospital’s doctors.

Dr Phan Thành Phước, head of the District 2 Health Centre, suggested that instead of general health clinics, the department should allow district-level hospitals to set up a satellite department for ART treatment under health insurance.

The Health Department plans to merge all district-level hospitals and health centres by 2020 in order to solve the shortage of doctors and ensure treatment for patients with HIV with health insurance.

Thủ Đức and Hóc Môn district hospitals and health centres will be the first to merge this year.

Dr Tiêu Thị Thu Vân, head of the city’s Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention, said that interruption in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for patients with HIV/AIDS raised the risk of spreading the virus in the community.

This could lead to a failure to achieve the UN’s 90-90-90 goals by 2020. The goals are to have at least 90 per cent of all people with HIV know their status and 90 per cent receive sustained antiretroviral  therapy (ART). The goals call for 90 per cent of all people receiving ARV therapy to be eventually diagnosed with viral suppression. — VNS