An IPU Advisory Group on HIV/AIDS and Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MCNH) mission to Viet Nam will look at how the country's response to HIV and AIDS can be strengthened. The mission will include a workshop on HIV prevention on 30 November that will review progress in this area with special emphasis on efficient approaches regarding access to HIV treatment. A field visit will follow on 1-2 December and will include meetings with the parliamentary bodies dealing with HIV and AIDS, government health officials and civil society, as well as visits to treatment and research facilities. The mission will recommend improvements to the Vietnamese National Assembly and will document good practices which IPU will share with the global parliamentary community.
The Government of Viet Nam recently announced its commitment to new targets intended to rapidly expand HIV treatment by 2020, becoming the first country in Asia to adopt the 90–90–90 goals: 90% of people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90% of people who know their status will be on HIV treatment; and 90% of all people on treatment will have undetectable levels of HIV in their body (known as viral suppression). There were 250,000 people living with HIV and 14,000 new HIV infections in Viet Nam in 2013. In 2014, more than 87 000 people were accessing HIV treatment, a 30-fold increase since 2005, but just one third of all people living with HIV, according to UNAIDS.
