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Living with Agent Orange

Decades later, the the effects of Agent Orange are still being felt Geoffrey Cain/IRIN
When US airplanes sprayed the jungle around Tran Thanh Dung with an orange mist during the Vietnam war, he did not know his children would suffer four decades later. At the time he was a child soldier with the Viet Cong, the communist guerilla group in central Vietnam.  
 
"The American airplanes came right towards me and dropped a mist on the jungle, and the next day, the trees were dead,” he recalls. “We weren’t scared. We were confused.”   
 
Tran was sprayed with Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the US army to kill off foliage in Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s and early 1970s, so the communist forces could not hide in the forests.  
 
The defoliant was contaminated with dioxin, a chemical believed to cause birth defects in the children of those exposed, say health experts. Today, Tran’s 18-year-old son suffers from spina bifida, an ailment doctors said was caused by Tran’s contact with dioxin in the early 1970s.  
 
Child victims like his son have “been forgotten”, Tran says. He wants the US government to reimburse the families of Vietnamese soldiers for the effects of the spraying. “The problems of the war will never leave us.”  
 
Legacy of tragedy  
 
The US sprayed about 75 million litres of Agent Orange around Vietnam, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the US Congress.  Most of the defoliant was sprayed in the war-ravaged central and southern provinces.
 
The Vietnamese government, meanwhile, estimates that as many as 400,000 people have died from illnesses related to exposure to dioxin, such as cancer.
 
It also claims that up to 500,000 children have birth defects, such as spina bifida, because their parents were exposed.
 
The US government insists that the direct spraying of Agent Orange on to people - as in Tran’s case - cannot be linked to any illnesses in Vietnam.  
 
It does concede, however, that people can get sick from ingesting contaminated water and vegetable supplies.
 
“The United States Government advocates the use of sound science,” Jim Warren, the US embassy spokesman in Hanoi, told IRIN. He was referring to an alleged lack of evidence that suggests a firm link between certain illnesses and dioxin exposure.
 
Progress
 
Others say that since the US and Vietnam normalized relations in 1995, they have been making progress on the Agent Orange issue.
 
In 2007, the US government and the Ford Foundation, a New York-based NGO, began funding a clean-up effort at Danang airport, which is thought to be one of the most contaminated sites in Vietnam.  
 
Government-funded centre for agent orange and other disabled children in Danang, central Vietnam
Photo: Geoffrey Cain/IRIN
A government-funded centre for children with disabilities - many of them caused by Agent Orange
Danang is the fourth-largest city in Vietnam and one of the country’s poorest. During the 1960s, the US military stored dioxin at the airport, which then seeped into the local water supply and soil.
 
But even with the clean-up, some farmers still cannot grow crops on the contaminated soil - a factor that many say has hindered the economic development of poverty-ravaged central Vietnam.
 
“In some areas called hotspots, like Danang, people cannot use land for agriculture,” says Vo Quy, former head of the Center for Natural Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the University of Hanoi, in the capital.
 
“Land and forests are important for our country, and people depend on nature for their livelihoods. It's very difficult for them to make a living in these areas.”

Children at risk

A 2009 assessment by a Canadian contractor determined that the clean-up reduced human exposure “significantly”. The main bulk of the cleaning-up project is expected to start this year.
 
However, the human toll created by dioxin remains, others say.
 
About 5,000 people in Danang might be ill from exposure to dioxin, of whom about 1,400 are children, according to the Danang Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, a Vietnamese NGO that runs rehabilitation centres for 100 disabled children.
 
The issue is not getting the funding it deserves, says Nguyen Thi Hien, the group’s president.

The government’s position is that many suffered as a result of their exposure.
 
“We need far more help from foreign donors,” Nguyen said, adding that she was disappointed the US “is not putting enough funds directly to helping the victims”.  
The US government allocated US$1 million of a $3 million aid package in Danang to helping victims.
 
The entire $3 million went to three NGOs: East Meets West Foundation, Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped (VNAH), and Save the Children. The projects were intended to provide services “without regard to the cause of disabilities”, David Moyer, assistant spokesman for the US embassy in Hanoi, told IRIN.
 
“The United States has contributed more than $46 million since 1989 to aid Vietnamese with disabilities,” Moyer added.
 
gc/ds/mw

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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