Vietnam has a population of 97 million people and according to the WHO Global TB Report 2022, Vietnam is one of the high TB and MDR-TB burden countries in the world with an estimated incidence of about 8,900 MDR/RR-TB patients each year. A total estimated number of pre-XDR-TB and XDR-TB patients in Vietnam each year is approximately 2,000.

The Vietnam National TB Program (NTP) piloted the programmatic management of drug-resistant TB (PMDT) in Ho Chi Minh City in 2009 and by the end of 2017, it has been implemented in all 63 provinces/cities across the country. All-oral shorter Bdq-containing regimen (STR, 9-11 months) for people with MDR/RR-TB and Bdq-containing regimens for pre-XDR TB have been approved by the Ministry of Health to be implemented nationwide under program condition.

With promising outcomes of the BpaL regimen in the Nix study-2, the Vietnam NTP has conducted the BPaL Operational Research (OR) with technical support under the LIFT-TB project. According to the WHO recommendations, the NTP decided to roll out the pretomanid based regimens country wide starting in 2024.

With the technical assistance under the LIFT-TB project, the NTP developed the road map and plan to roll out BPaLM/BPaL country wide. The National DR-TB guidelines have been updated and submitted to the Ministry of Health for approval. A clinical guide still needs to be developed after which clinical capacity need to be built to support the roll-out of the shorter regimens at the provincial and community levels as well as strengthening laboratory and active drug-safety monitoring and management (aDSM).

The partner landscape includes the Global Fund for diagnostic and follow up supplies, transportation, medication for DR-TB treatment, training for capacity building, supervision, instrument for early detection of adverse events detection, patient support, KNCV to lead LIFT-TB efforts and several USAID funded partners such as FHI360, UCSF that contribute to intensified and active case finding.