2 Vietnamese die of tuberculosis every hour

With 18,000 people dying of tuberculosis (TB) per year, Vietnam is among the 22 countries that suffer most from TB, the Vietnam Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases Association warns.

>> Vietnam among world’s top countries with tuberculosis

Figures were released by Associate Professor Dr. Dinh Ngoc Sy, the association’s president, at the seminar on tuberculosis prevention and control held in Binh Dinh Province on November 27-28.

The event was jointly organized by the Central Propaganda and Education Commission, the National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Program, and PATH, a US NGO that aims to transform global health through innovation.

Over the past several years, Vietnam has built a health network to combat TB from central to local levels, with advanced methods and equipment used for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention, Dr. Sy said.

However, TB remains the second cause of death in people with infectious diseases in Vietnam, where more than 100,000 new TB patients and 18,000 deaths of TB are recorded every year, Dr. Sy said.

That means two people die of TB every hour on average.

The fight against TB is facing many challenges in detecting new patients, improving treatment efficiency, and coping with multi-drug resistance among TB patients.

Dr. Sy, also the chairman of the National Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Program, said Vietnam also ranks 14th among the 27 countries with the highest number of multi-drug resistant TB patients.

Target: 20 patients/100,000 inhabitants

In the national strategy for anti-TB prevention and control by 2020, including a vision for 2030, the health sector has set targets of reducing TB patients and death tolls, with the ultimate goal of wiping out the disease entirely.

Health authorities aim to decrease the ratio of TB patients to population to less than 20 per 100,000 residents by 2030.

However, the fight is facing a shortage in both medical personnel and funding, especially in remote areas.

Meanwhile, international aids from various sources will reduce in the years to come, due to the fact that Vietnam is now considered a lower-middle-income economy, rather than its previous designation as a low-income economy, Dr. Sy said.  

TB most commonly affects the lungs and the disease is transmitted from person to person via bacteria from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease, according to the WHO.

In healthy people, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often causes no symptoms, since the person's immune system acts to “wall off” the bacteria.

The symptoms of active TB of the lung are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever, and night sweats. Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.