Law enforcement officers will be keen to see the impact that the availability of methadone for people in need has on curbing drug-related crime in Vietnam. If you are a law enforcement officer concerned about drug-related crime in your community, contact your local government officials or health centre and ask what you can do to support a methadone program in your area to reduce crime and keep the community safe.
See the excerpt below from the MMT Vietnam website:
Outcomes of methadone treatment in Vietnam
Treatment with opioid substitution treatment (such as methadone) reduces the risk of opioid overdose by almost 90% (World Health Organization, 2009). Results from studies of methadone maintenance treatment in Vietnam have shown that after two years of treatment:
- Drug use among methadone patients decreased from 100% (when starting treatment) to 15.9%
- The risk of contracting blood-borne viruses (such as HIV and hepatitis) decreased; only 4 out of 956 methadone patients were seropositive for HIV
- Drug-related crimes decreased; self-reported criminal activities decreased from 40.8% at beginning of treatment to 1.34%
- Employment rates increased from 64.04% (at beginning) to 75.9%
(Jardine, Nguyen & Khuat, 2012; Nguyen et al., 2012)
When administered by doctors and taken in appropriate dosages, methadone is a safe treatment. However, it must still be acknowledged that methadone is a very strong medication that can cause overdose or death if used incorrectly, especially among those with no tolerance to opioids. For this reason, methadone is dispensed at clinics with direct observation by health workers.
REFERENCES
- Jardine, M., Nguyen, V. A. T., Khuat, T. H. (2012). Case study: Methadone maintenance treatment in Hanoi, Vietnam. Harm Reduction Journal, 9. doi:10.1186/1477-7517-9-26.
- Nguyen, T. M., Nguyen, L. T., Pham, M. D., Vu, H. H., and Mulvey, K. P. (2012). Methadone Maintenance Therapy in Vietnam: An Overview and Scaling-Up Plan. Advances in Preventative Medicine. doi:10.1155/2012/732484.
- World Health Organization. (2009). Guidelines for the Psychosocially Assisted Pharmacological Treatment of Opioid Dependence. Geneva, Switzerland.
Learn more about the benefits of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) on this website available in English and Vietnamese. It has everything you need to know about why methadone and opioid substitution therapies are part of the comprehensive package of harm reduction interventions.