Viet Nam’s AIDS Healthcare More Sincere than US

Photo by UNESCAP

(Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam) During the week of August 23, 2005, local health officials in Ho Chi Minh City announced through The Saigon Times Daily that people with AIDS and HIV will have access to a confidentiality card.

This card, created by decision by the HCMC People’s Committee, will allow PWA/HIV with free medical care and prevention services. Because of Viet Nam’s economically developing status, only anti-retroviral drugs will be available free of charge to AIDS patients in serious need.

Free Medical Care With Confidentiality Card

This move is to address the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 HIV patients, of which approximately 10,000 are in need of urgent care. HCMC Committee for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Deputy, Le Truong Giang, announced that the cards will be available at the City’s 28 support centers. The cards will bear only a code and will not contain any other patient information.

To apply for the confidential card, individuals need to provided current demographic information, proof of AIDS diagnosis or HIV-positive status and certify they have not applied for a card at any other location. Many PWA are homeless or have drug addictions. HCMC is the first city in Viet Nam to issue cards to HIV/AIDS patients.

Viet Nam Steps Forward--US Steps Backward

While efforts to treat AIDS/HIV in Viet Nam are increasing, the United States and California are making efforts to take steps backwards. Republican California legislators have presented legislation to remove patient confidentiality and reductions in AIDS/HIV program and healthcare funding due to outdated allocation formulas which are based on estimates that undercount PWAs have been proposed in Congress.

Funding for disease prevention and education, housing, and the closing of publicly-funded care facilities has placed an onerous burden on those living with HIV/AIDS and those who tend to their needs.

In 2004, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors decided to close its General Hospital, despite warnings from the healthcare community that the indigent, working poor and underserved population would lose access to their only means of healthcare. There has been seen a significant decrease in physicians and dentists who accept Medi-Cal (US Medicaid) as a payer for services to the indigent disabled community.

Central Coast Health Priorities

In a region that has seen an increase in tourism, wine-grape production and especially in highly inflated land values, political emphasis has been on catering to the elite and discounting the value of life for the less-fortunate.

Viet Nam recognizes the value of all its citizens and tries to focus attention on healthcare. Even at a time of severe constraints and with rising world oil prices, Viet Nam continues to build new general hospitals in the more impoverished districts. Focusing the health care need of her people, Viet Nam is requesting assistance from international sources to help develop medical technology and provide it at a reasonable price.

US Highest In World Economic Ranking--Viet Nam Ranks 56th

The United States is the highest ranked economy in the World. California is usually ranked 6th. Viet Nam, a country that never saw the $4 billion in war reparations as promised by then President Nixon, is ranked 56th in the world (World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 15 July 2005).

It would be expected that a country like the US which has the richest economy would have more than enough to take care of its own and reach out to help others. Not so true. The US and California have been slicing social service benefits since the Bush Administration came to power and Governor Schwarzenegger has been Bush’s conservative ally in promoting social service decreases in California.

People in the US should be outraged. There should have been huge, unprecedented marches and demonstrations in Sacramento and Washington DC to protest these cuts, and in some cases, complete abandonment of other services. The question should be raised, "Why didn’t the people care?" The people and political leadership in Viet Nam care.
--Thomas Hutchings

Columnist Sowell Suffers From Misperceptions/Misinformation

Saigon, Viet Nam--In his August 10, 2005 column at townhall.com conservative columnist Thomas Sowell is concerned about the lack of news surrounding the heroics of the troops in Iraq by the mainstream media, specifically the New York Times and the "big three broadcast news programs." With the lack of responsibility of the mainstream media to report the truth leading up to the invasion of Iraq, it seems peculiar that Sowell would now take temporally displaced pokes at them.

Mr. Sowell claims the media portrays the troops as victims and nothing is noted about their heroics. He cites front page stories of Marine funerals and the financial hardship of National Guardsmen who have been called to active duty, citizen-soldiers who never thought they would be fighting in a war. Sowell mistakenly refers to Senator Kerry’s remarks about the National Guard becoming a "backdoor draft" stating that joining the reserves or Guard will exempt one from having to fight.

Sowell should understand a "backdoor draft" is to the benefit of the Bush Administration to draw troops from the civilian population without having to actually activate the Selective Service System.

Sowell simply states that "The theme of troops as victims has been a steady drumbeat in the media, because of the way the media have chosen to filter the news, filtering out heroes, among other things."

Mr. Sowell, you may recall this is the same media who helped whip the American public into a frenzy of patriotism (read "jingoism") as the mainstream media and the Republican Party-oriented Fox News incessantly reported the manufactured lies of the Bush administration alleging Iraq’s ties to Al Queda, possession of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of Iraq to "attack" the United States military bases, and Iraq’s attempts to buy nuclear material. Sowell doesn’t seem to know which way the wind is going to blow and his memory has become as selective as the Bush administration.

Sowell also claims this is a re-creation of the media’s reaction to the American War in Viet Nam (my words not his, Sowell used "Vietnam war") when "victories on the battlefield were turned into defeat on the home front by the filtering and spin of the media."

Sowell should recall there were no "battlefield" victories in Viet Nam, nor were there actual battlefields. The American War in Viet Nam was a guerilla war. Sowell claims current Vietnamese leaders claim they were losing the war militarily but expected to win politically.

As it is, Viet Nam was wearing the United States down militarily, but it wasn’t the "Jane Fondas, Walter Cronkites or a "cast of thousands in the streets and on the campuses across the country" who lost the war for America" it was the American political leadership and the military’s attempts at cover-ups.

The reader should recall that news about the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, could not be confirmed until 8 months after the fact. On that March day, over 500 Vietnamese civilians were murdered by three infantry divisions in the Son My district. Nixon had his own secret war in Laos and Cambodia, and when the North ventured across the 17th Parallel in 1972, Nixon ordered the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, in which over 200 B-52s caused devastation on the ground during Christmas of 1972.

There is a fraction of a point that I can agree with Sowell. He writes that the media filtering and gullibility of those who accept the truth by the media are at fault. Yes, Mr. Sowell, the gullibility of the American public who believe Fox News and the mainstream media about the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice/Wolfowitz created virtual reality led to an immoral, illegal and unprecedented unprovoked invasion of another sovereign nation by America.

Mr. Sowell, it is not the "dumbed-down education in our schools" that caused the American public inability to see through the "most blatant hypocrisy" but rather it was the American public’s primal need for revenge and to blindly follow leaders that has led to the quagmire America is in. America doesn’t seem to learn from history.

It’s about time, albeit late, that the mainstream media is beginning to educate the public about the futility and error of Bush’s War in Iraq. Mr. Sowell should be reminded of two things: the Iraq war is not the same as WWI or WWII and not everyone will believe the Bush Fairy Tales anymore.