No disease with AIDS-like symptoms in Vietnam
The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health (DoH) has denied rumors of a disease with AIDS-like symptoms appearing in Vietnam.
On August 23, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study saying that at least 200 Asian people had been infected with a strange disease and some of them died. The disease symptoms are like AIDS but they are not associated with the HIV virus.
After that a Vietnamese article also mentioned some similar cases being treated at hospitals in HCM City.
After conducting a survey, the municipal DoH concluded on August 27 that no such cases have been detected in Vietnam.
Nguyen Hoai Nam from DoH said health officials from all hospitals in the city had not admitted any patients of such strange disease.
Doctor Tran Phu Manh Sieu, Director of the municipal Preventive Medicine Centre, also affirmed that there is no acquired immune deficiency syndrome case like AIDS.
New disease
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it's important to note the disease is not contagious.
It is not a virus, that's the first thing. It's not a new AIDS-like virus, Fauci said. It's a syndrome that was noticed and discovered in Asia where people get opportunistic infections similar to HIV/AIDS, but the cause of the syndrome is not an infection like HIV.
The disease has been mainly detected in Thailand and Taiwan and some cases are of Asian origin living in the US.
Doctor Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, Director of the HCM City Tropical Diseases Hospital, said the disease is only found in adults, aged 50. Researchers temporally name it adult-onset immunodeficiency syndrome because they have not yet known its causes.
Chau added that identifying the new disease will be carried out by modern and special testing.
Doctor Truong Huu Khanh from Children’s Hospital 1 said it is a rare disease so local people should not be too worried.
A representative from the Ministry of Health’s Department of Preventive Medicine said Vietnam has not yet made any official report on the new disease.