Community Action for Preventing HIV/AIDS

In Vietnam the Project is implemented by the AIDS Division, Ministry of Health.

Participants at the provincial-level Baseline Survey Dissemination Workshop - Lai Chau, 13 August 2002.

Planning meeting, AIDS Division, Ministry of Health.

Participants discuss survey results at the central-level Baseline Survey Dissemination Workshop - Hanoi, 27-28 August 2002.

Vietnam Program

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HIV/AIDS infection has become a serious health issue in Vietnam. Since the first HIV positive case was detected in December 1990 the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been developing rapidly.

By October 2002 over 56,000 cases of HIV infections had been detected. More than 8,400 are reported to have developed AIDS and over 4,600 people are reported to have died of AIDS nation-wide.

The number of provinces reporting HIV/AIDS has increased every year. Presently, HIV has been found in all 61 provinces in Vietnam. The Project is working in Lai Chau, Quang Tri, Dong Thap, An Giang and Kien Giang provnices.

Concentrated HIV Epidemic
Extensive Migration

Concentrated HIV Epidemic

At present, Vietnam has a concentrated HIV epidemic, mostly transmitted through the sharing of needles during injecting drug use. About 160,000 Vietnamese are infected with HIV; the number is likely to increase to 197,000 by 2005. The three major subepidemics are among

young male injecting drug users in the north
young and older men and young women sex workers in some large cities, and
a few women who have practiced sex work in the south.

Vietnam does not have a generalized, heterosexually transmitted epidemic. HIV seroprevalence is high for injecting drug users including those who are also sex workers.

Among women who practice street-based sex work and do not admit to injecting drug use, rates vary from 1 percent to 12 percent. Rates among sex workers in the hospitality industry are much lower. Military recruit applicants have prevalence rates of 0.41 percent, although some of them inject drugs.

Extensive Migration

Informal internal migration is extensive, with Vietnamese sex workers and laborers working in both Cambodia and the Lao PDR, as well as in other Asian countries.

Those with highest vulnerability are debt-bonded Vietnamese women from the lower Mekong Delta provinces who work in brothels in Phnom Penh and provincial towns in Cambodia. Other migrant workers on construction sites in Cambodia and the Lao PDR are also vulnerable.

Vietnam Program