For Dr Oanh, Executive Director of the Centre for Supporting Community Development Initiative (SCDI) in Vietnam, the public health response to infectious diseases is deeply personal — and deeply urgent.

Twenty-five years ago, she witnessed firsthand the darkest days of the HIV epidemic in Vietnam, when there were no treatments and people died in pain, stigma and isolation. “We felt helpless as doctors,” she recalls. “We could only watch patients die.”

Today, thanks to global collaboration, access to quality-assured affordable generic medicines, made possible by voluntary licensing efforts, HIV is no longer a death sentence in Vietnam. The same is now true for hepatitis C, once an unaffordable and ineffective treatment landscape that has been transformed by access to quality-assured affordable highly effective direct-acting antivirals.

But tuberculosis (TB) tells a different story. “Vietnam remains one of the countries with the highest TB burden, including drug-resistant TB,” Dr Oanh says. According to the World Health Organization, Vietnam remains among the high TB burden countries globally[1], despite important progress in recent years. While first-line TB treatment is now covered by national health insurance, regimens can still be lengthy and challenging for many patients — and drug-resistant TB treatment is even more challenging.

The barriers go beyond medicines. TB diagnosis remains expensive, slow and difficult to access for many communities. Advanced diagnostic tools such as GeneXpert are still largely funded by international donors. “Without the Global Fund, many people simply would not be tested,” she warns. “If that support declines, access will drop dramatically.”

For the communities SCDI serves — people living with HIV, people who use drugs, sex workers, and other marginalised populations — these gaps are life-threatening. They include barriers to timely diagnosis, affordable treatment, and patient‑centred care. As international funding declines, Dr Oanh sees more than just financial loss. She sees trust eroding, voices falling silent, and people becoming afraid to speak out when treatments fail or side effects become unbearable. “People are now afraid to even complain,” she says. “If the pill causes side effects, they just accept it. There is no mobilisation, no advocacy, no feedback. The community is becoming muted.”

Her message for World TB Day 2026 is clear: progress is not guaranteed — and it can be reversed. As the global community marks World TB Day and renews its commitment to ending TB, her call is a reminder that sustained investment and collaboration remain essential.

“We made extraordinary progress on HIV because governments, donors, scientists, civil society and communities worked together,” she says. “If we stop now, we risk going back to the dark days.” Dr Oanh believes the same collaboration is urgently needed for TB — to shorten treatment, reduce side effects, improve diagnostics, and above all ensure affordable access for all. “People must be physically well before they can dream, work or live with dignity,” she says. “That is why access to essential medicines and diagnostics is not a luxury. It is the foundation of everything.”

At the Medicines Patent Pool, we work with governments, researchers, industry and communities to accelerate access to affordable TB innovations — because no one should be left behind in our global response to this preventable and curable disease.

 

[1] https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wpro—documents/countries/viet-nam/careers/2025/vn013_call-for-expression-of-interest-and-proposal_local-tb-stcs_nsp.pdf?sfvrsn=4246894f_1