Infectious disease centre for Vietnam

25 September 2002

A new centre for research into infectious diseases, jointly funded by the Vietnamese Government and the Wellcome Trust, was officially opened in Ho Chi Minh City on 20 September 2002.

The two-storey building houses diagnostic facilities for the Hospital with laboratories for scientists investigating a range of diseases, including malaria, typhoid, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, tuberculosis, meningitis and tetanus, all of which still cause major health problems in the country and through much of the tropics.

The Vietnamese Government has paid for the construction of the US$1 million infectious diseases research unit, which stands in the grounds of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases (formerly part of Cho Quan Hospital). The Wellcome Trust has provided US$1.5 million for equipment, which will form the infrastructure of an international quality facility for integrated clinical and laboratory research.

The project underlines the strong collaboration that has been formed between the Trust, the Government of Vietnam and scientists from the University of Oxford over the last decade. Vietnam is one of the host countries of the Wellcome Trust's South-East Asia International Research Programme, led by Professor Nick White, a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow. The research in Vietnam is led by Dr Jeremy Farrar who holds a Career Post in Clinical Tropical Medicine.

The Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Wellcome Trust began their collaborative research programme in 1991 with some of the first studies of the Chinese herbal drug qinghaosu (artemisinin) for the treatment of malaria. This has gone on to be recognized as the most potent and potentially the most important antimalarial treatment yet discovered.

In 2001 the World Health Organization formally supported combinations of artemisinin-type drugs with standard antimalarials as an approach to decrease the spread of drug resistance. Importantly results from the Trust-funded programme have helped to persuade health authorities in Vietnam and in neighbouring countries to change to more effective malaria treatment policies. Within Vietnam the widespread deployment of this drug has contributed to reducing the mortality rate of malaria to less than five per cent of the levels experienced in the early 1990s.

See also

• Unique Medical Venture in Vietnam (Press release: 9 September 2002)

External links

• Centre for Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford (Details of the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam)