Photo of Vietnam AO Girl Wins UNICEF Year Prize

A photograph of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl Nguyen Thi Ly with birth defects resulting from the Agent Orange during the Vietnam War has been named UNICEF’s 2010 Photo of the Year. The photo, taken by American Ed Kashi, was selected out of 1,263 photographs featuring children’s daily moments from 33 countries.  Ly is believed to be affected by dioxin, one of the ingredients in Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. army in the Vietnam War.  Her grandfather was a soldier in the war, and her mother and aunt also have facial deformities. The legacy of Agent Orange is still a major problem in that country. The Vietnam Red Cross estimates that three million people, including 150,000 children, suffer from the effects of dioxin. The photo was taken in a charitable program named Vietnam Reporting Project by the U.S. Winston-Salem fund. Wilson, one of the fund’s founders, who worked in Vietnam from 1995 to 1997 said the country still has deplorable conditions in some hospitals and orphanages. "When you come around the rural villages to bring help and medicine, there are heads in the windows and kids coming out by the thousands to see what's going on," Wilson said.
(www2.journalnow.com Dec 22)