Viet Nam determined to eliminate TB

Viet Nam ranks 11th among 30 countries worldwide with the highest burden of TB and multidrug-resistant TB.

Over the past year, it attained various achievements in new treatment regimens, diagnostics quality and screening as well as the expansion of TB prevention.

The National TB Program (NTP) in the post-pandemic has been widely implemented in a bid to maximize the detection of TB patients, the rate of diagnose and hospital admission in an attempt to put an end to source of infection in the community.

Viet Nam is one of the seven countries selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct research on the M72 tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, given the fact that they have a high tuberculosis burden.

The National TB Control Program estimated that Viet Nam detected 172,000 TB patients and around 13,000 related deaths in 2023. The successful treatment rate is maintained at a high level of over 90 percent.

Each year, around 9,200 multidrug-resistant TB patients were recorded, accounting for 4.5 percent of new patients and 15 percent of treated patients.

However, there are still more than 40 percent of TB patients in the community who have not been detected and not received needed treatment.

According to the WHO's 2023 report, TB is still the second leading cause of death in the world among infectious diseases, only behind the COVID-19. The current global goals in TB control are behind schedule./.