Vietnam uses methadone as drug substitute

Vietnam's Health Ministry has permitted, for the first time, the use of methadone, a synthetic narcotic, as a therapeutic tool to rehabilitate drug addicts, local newspaper Youth reported on Monday.

The Ministry permitted a foreign-funded project on using methadone on pilot basis to rehabilitate 700 local drug addicts in northern Hai Phong city from now to December 2008.

Under the pilot project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the UK Department for International Development, methadone will be given to the addicts. When being withdrawn from methadone after a certain period of taking the drug orally, they will undergo methadone withdrawal instead of the more severe heroin withdrawal.

Vietnam has recently paid greater attention to the methadone therapy, which has been conducted in many countries for years, partly because it wants to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS among infected narcotics addicts who often use the same injecting equipment like syringes.

According to many foreign and local experts, methadone maintenance, being oral, breaks the dangerous ritual of intravenous injection, and eliminates the addict's need to commit crimes to pay for drugs.

Vietnam, as of late 2006, has a total of 160,226 drug addicts, over 70 percent of whom are in the age bracket of 18-35, according to statistics from the country's Ministry of Public Security. Vietnam and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hope to achieve a drug-free region by 2015.

By early March 2007, Vietnam has diagnosed more than 114,000 HIV carriers, 95 percent of whom are aged 15-49. Of the people having HIV, nearly 19,700 have developed AIDS, including 11,500 fatalities, according to statistics from the Health Ministry.

The country plans to reduce the HIV/AIDS infection rate among its 85-million population to below 0.3 percent by 2010, and keep it unchanged after 2020.

Source: Xinhua