LIFE, DEATH OF VIETNAMESE AIDS PATIENT
In His Final Days, Former Drug User Did His Part In War Against
Epidemic

(Ho Chi Minh City)--His life, so bleak and so nearly over, was written in
the blue tattoo on his right arm, in the old wound on his left shin, in the
new rattle
inside his chest.

He was the sole surviving member of the first group of AIDS patients
to be diagnosed in Vietnam. There were 73 of them in June 1993, and
then there was just Mac Van Rong.

``They were my friends and they've all died,'' Rong, 46, said, weakly,
sadly. ``I'm very sick now, too. My tongue is hot and the disease has
bloomed inside me. I know I'm dying.''

Two weeks ago, Mac Van Rong died -- death No. 1,310 in Vietnam since
the disease first appeared in him and the others.

Cheap Drugs

In the past 18 months, the number of AIDS-related deaths has nearly
tripled, and government health officials are worried that a recent
avalanche of cheap heroin rolling into the country will cause
exponential increases in both AIDS and HIV, the immune-system virus
that causes AIDS. Like Rong, roughly two-thirds of all HIV/AIDS
patients in Vietnam contracted the virus from intravenous drug use,
with unprotected sex being the No. 2 cause of infection.

``As addiction grows, people are forced into injecting because it's
cheaper,'' said Dr. Nguyen Van Ngai, head of Binh Trieu Hospital and
deputy director of the adjacent Drug Abuse Tackling and Prevention
Center. ``As the drug problem increases, so does the spread of AIDS.''

Statistics range from the optimistic to the cataclysmic. The Ministry
of Health puts the current number of Vietnamese with HIV at just under
16,000, although U.N. experts say it's more like 90,000. Reports in
the state-run media predict that a half-million Vietnamese will be
HIV-positive by the end of next year, with an estimated 15,000 dying
of AIDS-related complications.

``Are we winning the war?'' Ngai asked glumly. ``That's hard to say.
We do our best, but it's a small contribution. We're fighting an epidemic.''

One World Bank expert says AIDS could be erasing 20 years of economic
gains in Vietnam and much of the rest of Southeast Asia.

Unraveling Progress

``AIDS threatens to slowly unravel the progress in improving the human
condition and to eliminate -- if not reverse -- the benefits of the
economic miracle,'' said Martha Ainsworth, a senior economist at the
World Bank.

``Even before the (regional financial) crisis, political commitment to
AIDS prevention in the region was weak, and many policy-makers are
still in denial.''

HIV and AIDS have their strongest footholds in Ho Chi Minh City,
formerly Saigon. Ngai said there are only three official treatment
centers operating in this southern city of 5 million.

His secluded center, a former Catholic seminary on the outskirts of
the city, has treated more than 4,000 drug addicts in the past decade,
many of them HIV-positive. Binh Trieu Hospital was built a few years
ago specifically to deal with the growing HIV crisis.

The center is part boot camp, part medical center, and patients are
forced to follow a strict routine of exercise, meals, studies and job
training.

Half the patients come to the center voluntarily and half are sent by
the courts. The minimum stay for everybody is three months. Mac Van
Rong was at the center for the better part of the decade.

In his final days, Rong did his part to help. His letters and poems
warning young people about drug abuse and unprotected sex were widely
published in newspapers in southern Vietnam. He also wrote a book
about AIDS sufferers called ``Unbrightened 46aces.''

Rong spent most mornings at the treatment center. He used to be an
orderly, but when his health began to fail he switched to cooking
meals for the sickest patients, those on what's known as Death Row.
Near the end, he could manage only a bit of janitorial work in the
cool of the mornings.

One recent morning Rong sat on a wooden bench in a small well-tended
garden. He quietly watched a group of young patients doing their
morning exercises. Most of the men wore flimsy hospital pajamas,
although one older man had on a pair of blue shorts with ``Joe Montana
Football Camp'' written on them.

Rong whispered the spare and dismal facts of his life, how he had been
born in Hai Duong, near Hanoi, and how his father, a soldier and a
devout Catholic, had fought valiantly against the French. In 1954,
with other Catholic families, they relocated to Saigon. Rong joined
the army and used his first opium when he was 18. He figured he has
been hooked ever since.

``Drugs were everywhere at the army base and drug use was rampant,''
he said. ``Opium was very cheap then (about 3 cents for a pipeful) and
we would smoke it.''

Rong rarely saw his parents after he started using drugs, and he knew
he was a huge disappointment to his family. As a kind of apology, he
gave himself a crude tattoo on his right arm: Con Danh Bat Hieu Voi Me
Cha -- ``I am a disloyal child to my parents.''

Rong fought for the South Vietnamese army, but he hated the military.
In 1972, he shot himself in the left leg and the army booted him out.

``After liberation (in 1975) I worked as a cyclo driver and a
newspaper vendor. All of my earnings went into injecting. That's when
I started using needles with others. We didn't clean them.''

Some of Rong's addict friends began coming to the Drug Abuse Tackling
and Prevention Center, and he would bring them food and clean clothes.
He began to sense that he, too, might be HIV-positive, so he had
himself tested.

Helping Others

``I was very depressed when I saw my name on the AIDS list,'' he said,
fingering a gold-and-jade ring that he calls ``my bank account''
because he occasionally pawns the ring to buy medicine. ``I eventually
came to understand that I had to help others in order to have an
optimistic life.''

So he began writing his letters and poems, which alternately read like
pleas or shouts or alarms. As the letters began to be published, one
woman was particularly touched by his sadness. So she came to visit
him.

``We were married three years ago,'' Rong said. ``She loved me through
my letters.''

His wife, 38, a seamstress, also has cooked at the treatment center,
and they shared a house across the street.

The doctors had not told Rong how long he might live.

``One doctor told me to be optimistic about the life I still have, and
he said if I stay happy I'll live longer.

``But I know I'm very sick now. I've thought I was about to die many
times, but I've always recovered. I'm running out of time. I'm the
last survivor.''