A fund worth $30 million has been raised in the U.S. in an effort to help Vietnam clean and revive areas contaminated by Agent Orange sprayed by American troops during the Vietnam War. The fund was initiated by U.S. scholars and people at a meeting held at Wake Forest University in North Carolina state Feb 18 in a bid to call for $300 million over 10 years to help Vietnam deal with the prolonged problems. One of the speakers at the meeting, Charles Bailey, director of the Special Initiative on Agent Orange/Dioxin for the Ford Foundation, said “Agent Orange's toxic legacy continues in 28 ‘hot spots' where the level of dioxin remains dangerously high in southern Vietnam.” Dealing with this issue was just part of the “unfinished business” left over from the American War, added Bailey. Many speakers involved in Children of Vietnam, a North Carolina-based nonprofit organization that provides assistance including food, medicine, housing and education to poor and disabled Vietnamese children since 1998. Catherine Karnow, a photographer who worked for National Geographic magazine and in the Smithsonian, recently returned to the U.S. from Vietnam said “When I told people I was going to photograph victims of Agent Orange they thought I was going to photograph people who were 75 or 85,” noting that many of them did not know “there are 150,000 Vietnamese children with diseases attributable to Agent Orange.”
Dannia Southerland, from Duke University, said it was necessary to help Vietnamese children and give them hope. Southerland is helping Vietnam to design a care system that will give these children access to medical, educational and vocational services.
The daily Winston-Salem Journal, in Northwest North Carolina, wrote “In the 1960s, the U.S. military sprayed more than 12 million gallons of a powerful herbicide called Agent Orange on five million acres of Vietnam to defoliate the undergrowth and expose the enemy.”
“It did defoliate plants, but in the process millions of people, including American servicemen, were exposed to Agent Orange. It contained dioxin, a contaminant linked to cancer, birth defects and other disabilities.”
“Overall, an estimated 4.5 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were exposed.”
The discussion at Wake Forest University was one of many activities being held in the U.S. within the framework of the Special Initiative on Agent Orange/Dioxin.
“Helping Vietnam to deal with the aftermath of Agent Orange “is a humanitarian issue, and we can do something about it,” Bailey confirmed. (vietnamnews.vnanet.vn Feb 23)
