Speeches Shim
In Vietnam’s Quang Nam and Thua Thien Hue provinces, thousands of people have been using or relying on their local forests’ resources to earn a livelihood. While active participation of communities living in and around protected areas greatly improves biodiversity conservation results, this hasn’t been the case in these two provinces where local communities have instead contributed to the pressures on the forests and biodiversity. However, these local community members know the forests’ flora and fauna very well and are daily witnesses to the causes and impacts of forest degradation. USAID’s Green Annamites project is establishing and training ten community conservation groups in these two provinces to raise awareness and focus local expertise on finding and implementing solutions for conserving forests and biodiversity, including identifying and removing wildlife snares, and documenting and reporting illegal timber harvest.
USAID and its partners are helping Vietnam accelerate epidemic control to reach the country’s 90-90-90 targets (where by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy; and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression). During the week of July 23, USAID’s Sustainable HIV Response from Technical Assistance project (SHIFT) provided technical support in Tay Ninh, Tien Giang and Dong Nai provinces to help local health authorities analyze viral load testing results. The results were outstanding since they found that 96.8% of those tested had viral loads below 1,000 copies/mL, which made them low risk of transmitting HIV. In addition, a majority of the 96.8% had viral loads below 200 copies/mL, making them unable to transmit the disease.
USAID’s Governance for Inclusive Growth Program is supporting Hanoi Law University, a leading public higher education institution in Vietnam, to develop a syllabus and teaching curriculum on the use of precedent as part of its masters’ degree program. As part of this assistance, USAID hosted U.S. Federal District Court Judge John Houston and Professor of Law Speedy Rice, both experts in the areas of Access to Justice and Anti-Corruption.
In Vietnam, stigma and discrimination remains a major barrier to HIV testing and treatment. In response, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health issued a directive at the end of last year to reduce stigma and discrimination in clinical settings. On July 4-6, USAID’s Sustainable HIV Response from Technical Assistance (SHIFT) project, the Department of Health of Dong Nai Province, and the Vietnam Administration for HIV/AIDS Control trained health professionals in the province to enable them implement this directive and understand the impact of their attitudes and behaviors on access to HIV services and patient retention. This will help health workers treat key populations with dignity and respect, including protecting the confidentiality of people at risk of HIV and persons living with HIV, both in health settings and in their communities.
There is a limited capacity among Vietnamese community-based organizations (CBOs) to deliver and monitor quality HIV services, such as outreach, testing and linking positive cases to treatments. Additionally, due to high turnover of community outreach workers, there is a great demand to train them on these services. On July 19 and 20, USAID’s Enhanced Community Link Southern project conducted the first Training of Trainers for about 20 selected potential master trainers from CBOs to design and deliver effective training courses.
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