Below is an article written by John Anner, Executive Director of EMW, regarding the new Support Network for People with Disabilities.

“There is a growing consensus among US officials that the dioxin issue
should not be allowed to linger as an irritant to warming relations between the two countries,” says Charles Bailey of The Ford Foundation. As part of this solution, EMW has received a large grant to create a program in Quang Ngai to help people with disabilities.

From 1962 to 1971 the United States military sprayed over 20 million gallons of herbicide over southern and central Vietnam. The program, called Operation Ranch Hand, was designed to remove the protective forest canopy that sheltered guerrilla forces and the supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Vietnam and Laos, to destroy food crops that could be used to feed enemy forces, and to clear vegetation around US military bases.

That herbicide, commonly known as Agent Orange after the colored stripe painted on the 55-gallon drums, defoliated millions of acres of land. Many areas of central Vietnam that were once lush tropical forests are, to this day, barren scrub lands while thousands of acres of coastal mangrove forests in Vietnam were also eliminated.

Today, thirty-five years after the spraying program was abandoned, the herbicides are gone – washed away by rains and degraded by time. However, something lethal was left behind, a chemical so dangerous it has been called “the most toxic molecule ever synthesized by man.” That chemical is dioxin, in a particularly nasty form called 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzenzo-p-dioxin, or TCCD for short. Unlike water-soluble herbicides, dioxin is environmentally persistent, meaning that it does not wash away on its own. Dioxin is a cause of cancer, birth defects (including horrible deformities), heart disease and other ailments.

The Vietnamese government estimates that over 400,000 people were hurt or killed by exposure to dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange during the war, and 500,000 children have been born with birth defects as a result of their parents’ exposure.

In the US, Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange successfully sued the US government to receive compensation for their illnesses. A class-action suit was settled for $180 million, and by 1998 nearly 6,000 veterans were receiving compensation for Agent Orange-related injuries, while 270,000 had registered on the Dept. of Veterans Affairs Agent Orange program. Vietnamese victims, however, receive only what the Vietnamese government can afford to give – usually just a few dollars a month.

For many years, Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange have pressed the US government for recompense (so far with no result), but it is a private foundation – the Ford Foundation – that has taken the lead in figuring out the best response to the persistent problems. According to Charles Bailey, the Ford Foundation Country Representative in Hanoi who has been the leader of this effort, the Agent Orange issue is something that can be addressed effectively through targeted interventions. Bailey argues that the top priorities should be providing health services in areas where dioxin is still prevalent and where Agent Orange was heavily sprayed; cleaning up “hot spots,” mostly former US military bases where Agent Orange was stored and often spilled in high concentrations; offering public health interventions around the hot spots and educating the American public.

Helping victims, however, is not easy. Part of the problem is that it is difficult and expensive to determine if a particular individual’s cancer or a child’s birth defect is directly related to the effects of dioxin. There are many disabled people in Vietnam who need help. In central Vietnam’s Quang Ngai province, for example, Vietnamese government statistics show that there are 47,000 people with disabilities. Of these, the government claims that 14,800 are dioxin-related. In Son Tinh district alone (the site of the infamous My Lai massacre in 1968), there are 4,000 people with disabilities and of these 1,500 caused by Agent Orange exposure. But can these cases be proven to be linked to Agent Orange with any certainty? Probably not.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Agent Orange exposure is a well-documented cause of cancers, birth defects and disabilities. The need is great, but local government health services are inadequate.

The Ford Foundation has decided to fund organizations that have programs to assist the disabled. Even if a direct causal link cannot be made between any individual’s disability and exposure to Agent Orange, there is a profound social connection that should be addressed by Americans – even by official American agencies. As Bailey puts it, “there is a growing consensus among US officials that the dioxin issue should not be allowed to linger as an irritant to warming relations between the two countries.”

As part of the solution, the Ford Foundation is making to address the issue of dioxin contamination in Vietnam, East Meets West has received a grant of $667,8000 to create a program in two districts in Quang Ngai to help people with disabilities. The program includes remodeling and equipping two medical facilities, screening and diagnosing all people with disabilities in Son Tinh and Duc Pho districts, and paying for surgical correction and other medical treatment for people who can be helped by the program.

The program, called the Support Network for People with Disabilities (SN-PWD), will launch in early 2007 and will run for five years. There will be particular attention paid to children with disabilities to enable them to attend school or get a good education in other ways (i.e. by home tutoring).

East Meets West and the Ford Foundation hope that the Support Network for People with Disabilities will not only provide long-term, sustainable health care for people suffering from disabilities in Quang Ngai province, but serve as yet another step in healing the relationship between the peoples of Vietnam and the United States.•.