USAID Viet Nam Mission Director Ann Marie Yastishock and National Lung Hospital Director Dr. Nguyen Viet Nhung at the handover ceremony of TB detection tools and treatment medications, Ha Noi, February 16, 2022 – Photo: suckhoedoisong.vn

The donation includes 38 rapid diagnostic machines with 90,000 compatible test kits and 10 digital X-ray devices to be distributed to district health facilities across the country, including in the remote provinces of Nghe An, Lai Chau, An Giang, and Dong Thap, which have dealt with a high burden of TB and a high rate of multidrug-resistant TB. 

The donation also includes drugs to treat 15,000 patients with latent TB infection for three months, on a nationwide scale.

In addition, USAID is funding a tailored package of training curricula and technical support to the National Tuberculosis Program, health facility staff and local partners. 

This will help ensure greater sustainability of efforts to enhance Viet Nam's active case detection, ensure accurate and timely diagnosis, and support linkages to treatment of active and latent TB.     

In Viet Nam, approximately 40 percent of new TB cases go undetected and untreated every year. The new diagnostic equipment and treatment medications delivered directly support Viet Nam's National Tuberculosis Program's "Double X" strategy to improve TB case detection and increase uptake of TB preventive therapy in joint effort to end TB in Viet Nam. 

TB is preventable and curable. Yet every year in Viet Nam, 172,000 people develop TB and more than 10,000 people die from TB, placing Viet Nam among the top 30 countries with the highest TB burden in the world. 

The impacts of COVID-19 have severely reduced TB care and services, with TB detection in Viet Nam decreasing by 23.5 percent in the first 10 months of 2021. To address this, USAID is also supporting the integration of TB screening within the Government of Viet Nam's COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.

Since 2018, USAID has provided Viet Nam with over US$16 million in TB health assistance. USAID will continue to support the introduction of the latest high impact TB technologies and treatment medications as part of the ongoing partnership and solidarity between the United States and Viet Nam.