Professor William Hall, UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science
A major aid initiative, spear-headed by Prof Bill Hall, UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science and the Centre for Research of Infectious Diseases at UCD, has helped to identify an unusually high rate of hepatitis B infection in Vietnam. The research programme has also established that HIV infection in the southeast Asian country has yet to spread significantly to the wider population.
On 17th March, Minister Conor Lenihan, TD, formally opened a custom-built diagnostic facility developed by the Ireland-Vietnam Blood-borne Virus Initiative (IVVI) at the national Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) in Hanoi. The facility is part of a wider initiative designed to diagnose viral infections in Vietnam and to conduct an epidemiological study of the prevalence and characteristics of blood-borne viruses circulating in that country.
The study, which received funding of €5 million from Irish Aid and Atlantic Philanthropies, began in 2007 and will be completed in 2011. The results will be used to inform public health policies aimed at reducing the significant morbidity and mortality associated with blood-borne viruses in Vietnam.
The entire epidemiological study involves taking blood and saliva samples from 33,000 people across the country. Vietnam is an enormously varied country with some very inaccessible mountainous regions which include many ethnic minorities. The process of collecting the samples involves travelling throughout the country and reaching different “at risk” population groups including commercial sex workers, intravenous drug users, dialysis patients and multi-transfused patients.
So far, the study shows that there is a very high prevalence of blood-borne virus infections in northern Vietnam, with almost 25% of samples testing positive for one or more of the infections under investigation. Infections are highest among the “at risk” groups with 70% of intravenous drug users and 60% of commercial sex workers testing positive.
However, there appears to be little transmission of HIV or HepC in the general population, which according to Prof Hall, gives the Government the opportunity to introduce public-health prevention measures.
The study also shows that, as with elsewhere in Asia, chronic Hepatitis B virus infection is endemic in Vietnam with as many as 8 million people infected with this prolonged and chronic disease.
