Symptom assessment and treatment for people living with HIV (PLHIV) cannot only lead to improvements in quality of life but contribute to combination antiretroviral adherence and early detection of virologic rebound. The majority of PLHIV in Vietnam receive their care in HIV outpatient settings, whereas very few clinics provide palliative care. The Ministry of Health has called for palliative care to be incorporated into existing HIV and cancer services, but there is limited guidance regarding how to operationalize integration. An HIV outpatient clinic palliative care intervention was tested in northern Vietnam to explore the accessibility, acceptability, and feasibility of integrated services. Primary outcome measures included changes in identification and treatment of pain and other symptoms, the prevalence of depression and anxiety, and perceived social support. The palliative care intervention included introduction of tools and mentoring to assess and treat pain and other symptoms as well as mental health and social support screening, counseling, and treatment services. The intervention resulted in significant changes in provider practice and service delivery. Providers and patients reported overall satisfaction with the intervention and resulting improvements in quality of care.

In this article, we use the technique of stochastic frontier estimation for the structural gravity model to analyse Vietnam’s bilateral trade and evaluate its exploitation of trade efficiency before and after its free trade agreements (FTAs) with China and India entered into force. The results from Vietnam’s bilateral trade data between 2000 and 2015 show that the ASEAN–India Free Trade Agreement (AIFTA) has had a positive impact on Vietnam’s bilateral trade flows while we found a remarkably negative effect on Vietnam’s exports but not imports after the entry into force of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA). In addition, Vietnam’s participation in the regional trade agreements (RTAs) and FTAs has significantly reduced the costs of trade over time, and these impacts on Vietnam’s imports are much higher than those on Vietnam's exports.

Land resources potential assessment is a valuable method for orienting land use planning in the world as well as in Vietnam.The objectives of the study are (1) to assess land suitability and (2) to orient the effective use of agricultural land in the study area. Results indicated that Ham Thuan Bac has 107 land mapping units (LMU), in which includes 11 land-use types (LUTs) such as rice, corn, cassava and sweet potato, sugarcane, grass for livestock, vegetables, green dragon fruit, rubber, coffee, and other fruit trees. Agricultural land with high suitability (S1) and moderately suitable (S2) for mostly LUTs is small, however, marginally suitable (S3) and not suitable land (N) are quite large. More than 50% of the LUTs for growing rice, rubber, coffee, other fruit are not suitable; the remaining LUTs have unsuitable land ranging from 10.76% to 25.16% of agricultural land in the district. Based on land suitability classification, we propose to keep 8550 ha with S1, S2, and a part of S3 area to be irrigated for cultivating rice; 9071.7ha of dragon fruit land including 694.67 ha of S1 and 8377.03 ha of S2 land; and only cultivate annual crops, fruit trees and grazing grass on the land with suitble levels from S1 to S3 of the current status.The remainingareas ofS3 and N for riceand areas of S2 and S3for green dragon fruit under S2, S3with active and semi-active irrigation regimeswill be converted to annual crops and fruit trees and grass for livestock.

No abstract

No abstract