Picture: The government rehab centre in Tuyen Quang, North Vietnam, where children receive physiotherapy.
Together with representatives from Greencross and KADO, a Cambodian NGO, I traveled 3.5 hours to the North of Vietnam (about 150km from the Chinese border) to Tuyen Quang, a city with about 70’000 inhabitans. There Greencross supports a local rehabilitation centre operated by an energetic and determined Vietnamese doctor, Dr. Ha. The Agent Orange affected children with disabilities are not only given treatment and rehabilitation but also are given cows in the form of a microcredit, therefore providing a living for the whole family.
We visited four families with between four to six children who were mostly disabled, mentally and/or physically. All fathers of the families were soldiers in the Vietnam War and exposed to Agent Orange. One father had three disabled children out of four and told us in tears that without the cow, from the already repaid microcredit, he would not know how to survive.
Similar to the effects of exposure to radiation (like in Tschernobyl) Agent Orange alters the genetic setup of humans. So far no one knows how long the severe effects will last. In some families the disabilities only show in the second generation. It seems that the war will last much longer in Vietnam.
For more pictures go to: http://easteatswest.typepad.com/photos/tuyen_quang_vietnam_/index.html
For more information about the work of Greencross, visit their website: http://www.greencross.ch/
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