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Innovative strategies against
HIV/AIDS
A Hanoi commercial sex worker, Nhi had no means to seek treatment for her HIV-positive baby and left him on the steps of a center caring for injecting drug users, commercial sex workers and children living with HIV. Months later, Nhi returned to the center hoping to see her son although she feared she might be arrested or turned away.
Instead she was welcomed into the Social Labor Center, and she now works as one of a number of volunteer surrogate mothers, caring for her child and two other HIV-positive children who were abandoned there.
Nhi's story is an example of the new ways through which the government of Viet Nam is seeking to provide care and support to groups vulnerable to HIV.
With a population of more than 82 million, Viet Nam is facing a rapidly-expanding epidemic, although its prevalence rate is still relatively low as a percentage of the population (.05 percent). While in 2001 the number of reported cases was approximately 43,000 in 2005, an estimated 260,000 Viet Namese were living with HIV/ AIDS.
The government of Viet Nam has shown a strong commitment to the prevention and control of HIV since 1996, when the Ministry of Health adopted an initial strategy to combat the epidemic. In 2004, the Prime Minister of Viet Nam approved the National Strategy on HIV/AIDS through 2010, endorsing a comprehensive approach to prevention, treatment and care that includes services for the most vulnerable.
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