A medical worker is taking blood sample for HIV test at Khanh Hoa province’s HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Centre. (Photo: khanhhoa.gov.vn)Hanoi (VNA) – The said the country has
successfully bidden anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs with prices 15-17 percent lower
than those of similar drugs in use, bringing more hopes to local HIV/AIDS
patients.
Before 2015, ARV
drugs often came from drug aid by foreign organisations, including US
government-backed President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as support from
the Clinton Foundation.
Since these
organisations have run programmes to provide ARV drugs in large amounts to a
lot of countries over a long time, in order to ensure the same quality of drugs
for all recipient countries, they would bulk purchase from the producers for a
slightly better price.
From 2015,
overseas funding for HIV/AIDS treatment pills began to drop. To make sure that
the supply of ARV drugs would not be interrupted, the Government has tasked the
health ministry with using the State budget to purchase ARV drugs. The
Administration of HIV/AIDS Control, with the help of international
organisations, has managed to negotiate and win bids to buy the drugs in line
with World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.
In 2016, for the
first time ever, the department bought 6.4 million 3-in-1 ARV pills – a single
one of these 1200mg pills would contain the three types of medications that
patients needed – for the price of 7.299 VND or 0.32 USD (5 percent VAT already
included). Vietnam has managed to secure a better deal, buying the pills 16.6
percent cheaper compared with the Global Fund’s purchase price of 0.3681 USD,
or 17.8 percent cheaper against the purchase price of PEPFAR’s 0.3728 USD.
In 2017, the
country procured 3 million 3-in-1 ARV pills at an even lower price, 0.268 USD,
15 percent cheaper compared to 2016 and still lower than the purchase prices
from the two abovementioned aid agencies.
The HIV/AIDS
Control department said that towards the goal of covering 90 percent of
HIV/AIDS patients with affordable treatment regimes, the financial sum would be
a burden on the State budget.
Dr Kato Masaya,
Coordinator for Communicable Disease Group at the WHO Vietnam Country Office,
said WHO considers Vietnam a highlight in the region in treating HIV/AIDS with
ARV, especially its efforts in implementing WHO’s recommendations on
diagnostics and maximising coverage of ARV treatment.
Currently, there
are 130,000 Vietnamese patients under treatment with ARV drugs.
According to
world experts, in the past decade, the increasingly accessible ARV therapies
have helped 150,000 HIV patients escape death and prevent infection in 450,000
people.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
