U.N. Acts on Drugabuse Link to AIDS in Vietnam

HANOI, Vietnam (Reuter) A U.N. group said Friday it had agreed to launch
a threeyear program to try to brake the spread of HIV/AIDS among drug
abusers in Vietnam.

"HIV/AIDS prevention targeted for urban youth is a pressing mission to be
achieved since intravenous drug abuse is spreading among young people in
urban areas and provincial towns at an alarming rate," the U.N.
International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) said in a statement.

It said the sharing of contaminated syringes and needles among injecting
drug users was responsible for more than 60 percent of the confirmed HIV
cases in Vietnam.

Government estimates unveiled by the United Nations in July showed that the
number of people infected with HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS, was
about 12 times higher than the number published in the official media.

It said that according to unofficial Ministry of Health estimates, 84,195
are infected with the virus and over 263,000 would be HIV/AIDS victims by
2000 equivalent to more than 0.3 percent of the projected population at
the turn of the century.

In the first few years of its official AIDS epidemic, from 1990 to 1993,
the government focused on jailing drug abusers and people involved in the
sex trade.

National AIDS Committee officials now believe this may have been
counterproductive because it drove intravenous drug users underground,
where HIV could spread silently through needlesharing, instead of
encouraging behavioural change.

The UNDCP said the USDollar 635,086 project, which is partly funded by
Denmark and Britain, would establish working models for communitybased
drug abuse and HIV prevention programs and carry out peer education
activities in nine cities.