VI:Another ban of promising cure in VN
Vietnam Insight
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Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Friday - September 18, 1998
Hanoi set to reject another anti-heroin drug
By Michael Mathes
Hanoi (dpa) - A heroin treatment indigenous to Vietnam is likely to be
supressed by health officials, the drug's creator Vu Van Chuyen said Friday.
With heroin and opium use spiralling out of control in the country, the
impending rejection by the ministry would mark the second major anti-heroin
drug in a year brushed off by health officials.
After three years under the microscope, Cedemex, which is said to bring users
down in just four days and without the horrific side effects of other
treatments, was recently rejected by a Hanoi hospital conducting an approval
study.
But Cedemex creator Vu Van Chuyen, who is head of the Center for Research and
Development of Pharmaceutical Materials, said there is an orchestrated
movement against him and his drug which involves extensive corruption.
``They're afraid a good medicine is going to overwhelm the lesser ones and
dominate the market,'' an outspoken Chuyen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
``This is aimed at delaying the approval process, imposing [the health
ministry's] subjective view, and derailing the results of tests of Cedemex in
order to protect the monopoly of Hufusa on the market,'' he added.
Lengthy approvals in Vietnam's heavy bureaucracy are nothing new, and
observers caution against knee-jerk reactions in case of delays.
A Vietnamese doctor and former addict made headlines around the world last
year when an international team sought to test Heantos, a nutty brown herbal
concoction of bark and stems which worked wonders on heroin addicts by
painlessly bringing them down off their highs.
The ministry quickly blamed the miracle cure for the death late last year of a
treatment center patient and started what quirky inventor Tran Khuong Dan said
was a smear campaign against him.
The ministry of health has since come up with its own treatment, called
Hufusa, which won rapid approval when it was introduced.
``To the best of my knowledge, Vietnam takes the approval of drugs very
seriously,'' said Jens Hannibal, country manager of the United Nations Drug
Control Programme.
Heantos, the drug which garnered all the international attention, is currently
being tested for toxicity, says Hannibal. A year of clinical testing is
expected to follow, starting October or November.
There is still some hope for Cedemex. Chuyen said a Ho Chi Minh City hospital
won ministerial approval Friday to test the drug in the south, where the bulk
of Vietnam's 69,000 heroin addicts live.
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Reuters
Thursday - December 04, 1997
Vietnam Medicine Man Banned Over Drugs Wonder Cure
By Adrian Edwards
HANOI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Trials of a potential new drug-addiction
cure hit problems on Thursday, when Hanoi announced that its
Vietnamese inventor had been banned from producing the medicine
and treating patients.
Health Ministry officials told Reuters that Tran Khuong Dan, a
traditional herbalist who turned himself into an opium addict in
order to find a cure after his brother died of an overdose, had
been banned from providing treatment to patients or manufacturing
the medicine.
``Tran Khuong Dan and some other groups have abused the medicine
in order to give treatment and get paid,'' an official said by
phone.
``The fact is that a person died at one of Dan's treatment
centres.''
The official said that clinical studies into the effectiveness of
the medicine -- a fiery-tasting brown syrup made from herbs, and
known as Heantos -- would continue, but under state supervision
only.
He said Dan was not qualified as a doctor, and the decision to
ban his activities had been taken following an Interior Ministry
investigation into Dan's activities.
Dan was not immediately available to comment but fellow
researchers said the claims that a patient had died from taking
Heantos had not been proven.
They said the individual involved had been suffering severe
health problems before treatment was administered. The cause of
death was still not known.
Officials at the United Nations, which is backing the trials,
said on Thursday they were seeking further details of what lay
behind the ban.
``We don't yet know what's happening here,'' said spokeswoman
Laura Dillon of the U.N. office in Hanoi. ``All we know is that
he has been running private clinics, and that is illegal.''
But the news comes as a blow to a programme which has shown
promise and received considerable international attention.
In June this year the United Nations Development Programme
announced it was stepping up testing of the medicine.
Roy Morey, the UNDP's Washington director, told a news conference
in the United States that it had already been tested on 3,000
Vietnamese addicts.
He reported extraordinary initial results with low rates of
re-addiction, and minimal side effects, and said a two-year
follow-up programme was under way in both Vietnam and at the John
Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Journalists, who were invited on tours to witness treatment
progress, were shown patients who were able to abstain from
taking heroin, cocaine and some addictive medicines after just
once course of treatment -- with few withdrawal symptoms.
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