Embassy Hanoi and Consulate General Ho Chi Minh - OIG - US ...

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The Bilateral Trade Agreement and Vietnam’s accession to the World Trade
Organization are strong, mutual goals. USAID plays a leading role among all other
donors in advising Vietnam on the modernization of its business codes, a technical
assistance effort for those activities running at about $4 million yearly.
USAID has just moved into modern facilities, where 18 Vietnamese and seven
American officers support programs promoting economic growth and containing
and relieving HIV/AIDS (see below). Its disability assistance, originally focused on
victims of war and disaster, can now be used for all forms of disabilities (about
$3.5 million yearly). Another focus is environmental assistance (approximately $1
million).
Critical Health Cooperation
An embassy officer described Vietnam as “a petri dish for infectious diseases.”
Another explained that dengue fever, avian influenza, Japanese encephalitis, HIV/
AIDS, and tuberculosis are among the diseases making the country critical in
epidemiological terms. With perhaps 60,000 new cases of tuberculosis per year,
sharply rising rates of HIV/AIDS as the disease moves from needle-driven propagation
into the general population, and the country’s position as an epicenter of
bird influenza, the United States places a premium on health cooperation in Vietnam.
The Department of Health and Human Services is represented by an attaché,
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expanding from two to four
American employees and 15 to 20 Vietnamese employees.
In 2004, Vietnam became the only Asian “focus” country in the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a 5-year $15 billion program that included $27.6
million for U.S. government agencies in Vietnam for 2005. The program combines
the efforts of USAID and Departments of State, Health and Human Services
(including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), Defense and Labor in
helping to prevent and treat the disease in Vietnam. USAID and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention administer most of the funding. The President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief absorbed the overall mission’s energy in 2005, as
mechanisms were established to conduct health programs, and it was one of the
primary factors in the embassy’s request for the assignment of an environment,
science, technology and health officer, as discussed elsewhere in the report.
Important to mutual understanding, the Department of Health and Human
Services attaché grasps the controversy over the use of Agent Orange (a defoliant)
during the Vietnam War and has been working actively, though unsuccessfully, to
improve Vietnam’s scientific understanding of what health conditions Agent
10 . OIG Report No. ISP-I-05-28A, Inspection of Embassy Hanoi and CG Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, September 2005
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