The programmes, which take place this week in Hanoi and next week in the southern business capital of Ho Chi Minh City, are aimed at improving treatment and care methods for patients with the disease, the US embassy said.

"From this training patients will be treated better in their locality for both opportunistic infection prophylaxis and treatment so they can stay healthier and live longer," it said in a statement.

The participants will receive extensive training materials to teach other health care workers, the embassy said.

The 15 experts come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, Yale University, the University of California-San Francisco and the World Health Organization.

Over 71,000 Vietnamese are known to be HIV positive, but the health ministry estimates there are more than 160,000 carriers. Independent experts, however, say the figure could be as high as 300,000.

In October last year during a visit to Hanoi, Dr Nafis Sadik, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's adviser and special envoy on HIV/AIDS, warned that the communist nation needed to take urgent action to prevent a crisis.

She also called on the government to move away from linking the disease with "social evils," saying it stigmatised those with HIV/AIDS.

"Social evils" is the term used by the government to describe a wide group of illegal activities, including drug addiction and prostitution.

TERRA.WIRE