Haemophilia is an inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body’s ability to make blood clots, caused by decreased or abnormal function of coagulation factors VIII and IX. It can cause a person to bleed even without being injured for a long duration and repeat many times.
Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Emicizumab is deemed as an innovative prophylaxis for haemophilia A in Vietnam as the drug helps prevent and reduce the frequency of bleeding episodes in patients. However, the drug is very expensive since it is estimated that a 50-kg patient needs to spend around 4 billion VND worth of the drug a year.
Last year, Vietnam received 4,410 vials of Emicizumab, worth 125 billion VND, from the WFH. The drug has been given free of charge to patients with haemophilia A.
According to Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai from the NIHBT, there are over 6,200 haemophilia patients in Vietnam, with haemophilia A cases (related to clotting factor VIII) accounting for 80 percent. Among them, nearly 40 percent have not been diagnosed or treated. If haemophilia is not detected early, diagnosed and treated properly, the bleeding episodes will deform the muscles and joints, causing pain and difficulty in movement and affecting the quality of the patient’s life significantly. If the bleeding occurs in risky areas, the consequence can be fatal to the patients.
Although there is no current cure for haemophilia, early diagnosis and appropriate treatment can help the patients maintain their health and have an almost normal life. Injecting medicine regularly can help them avoid the risk of bleeding in daily life.
