Vietnam latest news | AIDs pill not licensed in Vietnam yet, official says

AIDs pill not licensed in Vietnam yet, official says 

Last Updated: Friday, August 10, 2012 05:40:00

Vietnam’s drug administration said it has not licensed an AIDS cure called Profital that many people are looking for after claims that the drug was invented by Russian scientists and tested successfully on humans.

Nguyen Van Thanh, head of the Drug Management Department at the Ministry of Health, said Thursday that they have not had the drug registered or granted a license for its import.

Thanh said several "means of public communication" had run advertisements and commercials about the drug, triggering a public rush for the crowd.

But the department has not received official information from Russia’s drug management agencies, and thus cannot provide any facts about the medical effect of Profital on HIV/AIDS, he said.

“People should not buy or use any medicine without reliable origins that have not been licensed by the authorities,” Thanh said.

As of the end of last year, Vietnam had nearly 198,000 HIV infections accounting for 0.22 percent of the population, including more than 14,000 new cases, the National Committee of HIV/AIDS Prevention said in a February report.

Most of the new cases occurred in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and northern provinces, and were caused by drug use and prostitution.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently approved a plan aiming to contain HIV/AIDS infections at under 0.3 percent of the population by 2020.

It calls for the utilization of  modern technologies to prevent all new infections and deaths from AIDS by 2030.