Tuberculosis is a leading cause of death in HIV infected people across the globe, said Bui Duc Duong, deputy chief of the Vietnam Administration of HIV/AIDS Control (VAAC) under the Ministry of Health at a meeting in Hanoi on November 19.
The ratio of dead HIV-infected people suffering also from tuberculosis is now threefold, compared to those not infected with HIV/AIDS.
Each year around 180,000 Vietnamese people are infected with some form of tuberculosis and 29,000 of them often succumb to the disease.
The Mekong Delta is leading in the most number of tuberculosis infected people, with the southeast and the south-central coastal provinces ranked second and third, respectively.
More noticeably, only 59 percent of tuberculosis patients undergo tests and receive consultation and only 48 percent of HIV and tuberculosis-infected people receive treatment in the country.
