The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign will continue its efforts to claim compensation for AO victims in Vietnam, said Susan Marina Schnall, the co-chairperson of the campaign. Schnall, who leads a visiting delegation of the Public Health Science Committee under VAORRC, made her statement at a meeting with the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) on Friday. She said VAORRC would continue to request the US Government to provide comprehensive support to AO victims, clean up AO-infected areas in Vietnam, and force US chemical companies, which provided defoliants to US army for use in the Vietnam War before 1975, to pay damages to AO victims. Nguyen Van Rinh, VAVA chairman, expressed his hope that US scientists would voice their political opinions about the AO-induced congenital anomalies that occurred to people of the second, third and fourth generations in Vietnam. American scientists should also help accelerate the passing of the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2011 (H.R. 2634) by the US Congress, Rinh said. Earlier, at a meeting with the delegation on June 8, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan suggested US scientists conduct deeper research to establish concrete data that can form a basis for asking for assistance in environmental detoxification and rehabilitation treatment for Agent Orange victims in Vietnam. Millions of Vietnamese people were exposed to the Agent Orange sprayed by the US troop during the war and the toxic chemical continues to affect younger generations of the victims, Nhan told the delegation. (Tuoi Tre June 16)
