Source:   BBC News
Pubdate:  7 Nov 1997
Website:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Contact:  VIETNAM'S NEW APPROACH TO DRUGS

For hundreds of years, the people of Vietnam have used opium as a 
sedative and cureall, and addiction, especially in rural areas, is 
common. But only in the last twenty years has the use of heroin, refined 
from opium, become a problem, especially in the cities. Now, however, 
there are signs of a possible surprise advance in confronting heroin 
addiction and the massive problems that go with it. By using traditional 
herbal medicines, the Vietnamese believe they may have found a quick and 
simple cure. And they've won some powerful international support in 
their new venture. Keith Graves has been to Vietnam to investigate... 

The drug rehabilitation centre at Hoa Binh, a twohour drive north of 
the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, is an unlikely spot to find an experiment 
being carried out that could prove to be a major breakthrough in the 
treatment of drug addiction. The centre lies down a dirt track on the 
edge of a village. The gates are locked. The surrounding tenfoot high 
rough concrete wall is daubed with lurid paintings and slogans that, 
although written in Vietnamese, leave no doubt about their meaning. With 
accompanying pictures, one message says drugs are the highway to hell. 

Until recently the Hoa Binh centre was the refuge of, and last resort 
for, addicts. If the "cold turkey" method of weaning them off drugs by 
denying them access failed to work, and it seldom did, they faced an 
early death. But now Hoa Binh has become a place of hope where addicts 
come voluntarily seeking a cure for their addiction in the firm belief 
that there is one thanks to a black, sticky liquid that has been given 
the name of Heantos  a play on the words "heat of the sun." 

It's the invention of Dr Tran Khuong Dan, one of Vietnam's foremost 
herbalists. Ten years ago, his father became addicted to opium and has 
since died. Mr Tran set out to find a cure for addiction using 
traditional ingredients  leaves and roots and tree bark. He travelled 
the length and breadth of his country where many people still swear by 
herbal cures over more modern medicines, collecting recipes from other 
herbalists. Then he set about finding the right mix. As he tells it, he 
made himself dependent first on opium, and then on heroin. And when he 
broke his addiction, he knew he had succeeded in his quest. 

Dr Tran took his recipe to the National Centre for Natural Sciences in 
Hanoi where the mix of thirteen herbs and root extracts  some as common 
as ginger, liquorice and cinnamon, others rare ingredients only found in 
the remoter parts of the country  were refined into the black liquid 
and given the name Heantos. 

It has, for the past six months, been in regular use at the Hoa Binh 
centre where the results appear to be quite remarkable. When I visited
the centre, the doctor in charge introduced a group of 20 patients, 18 
men and two women, admitted three months earlier. Half were addicted to 
opium, half to heroin. They had completed the Heantos course and all 20 
claimed they were no longer dependent on drugs. They certainly showed 
none of the usual symptoms and were soon to be released. 

The day I first visited, two young addicts were admitted. They had all 
the obvious symptoms and one of them had, from the black lines under the 
skin, clearly been injecting deadly opium residue. Their fiveday course 
of heantos, administered orally three times a day, started immediately. 
When I returned some days later, they appeared and claimed to be normal 
and were working in the centre's garden. 

Now this could easily be dismissed as quackery  except for the fact 
that the United Nations Development Programme is so impressed that it's 
backing a threeyear research project by the prestigious Johns Hopkins 
Medical Research Centre and the Medical College of Virginia Drug 
Dependency Centre in the United States. Lutz Baehr, a United Nations 
international project coordinator, who now divides his time between New 
York and Vietnam, says he's witnessed the effectiveness of Heantos many 
times. He doesn't understand how it works, but when he sees how 
ineffective are cures offered in industrialised countries and the 
effectiveness of the herbal cure, he is convinced it is worth pursuing. 

The project has the backing of the UN SecretaryGeneral, Kofi Annan, 
because he believes it is important for the Third World  "recipient 
nations" in UN jargon  to be able to offer something back to the donor 
nations of the industrialised world. 

It will be a long time yet before that happens  even if heantos does 
live up to the hopes and expectations being pinned on it  because it 
will have to undergo very lengthy tests and stringent research on 
animals, not least to discover any possible longterm effects, before it 
could even be tested on human beings, never mind be put into general 
use. But as far as the patients at the Hoa Binh centre in Vietnam are 
concerned, there is nothing to prove.