Decades later, Vietnam war toxin still torments
QUANG TRI PROVINCE - Do Duc Duyen was born with two heads and is blind, deaf and utterly helpless. The seven-year-old lies on a bamboo mattress at a hospital outside central Quang Tri province, crying constantly. Although he was born over two decades since the Vietnam War ended, Duyen is nevertheless a victim of that tragic conflict. Doctors say he is a victim of Agent Orange.
The Vietnamese government says there are three million victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, and that the number is growing as the jungle defoliant continues to contaminate livestock and fish eaten by Vietnamese decades after it was used by the U.S. military. "Two-thirds of the children I care for come from the areas where Agent Orange was used during the war," says Dr. Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan, the head of Tu Du hospital's Peace Village where Duyen is one of 60 patients. Abandoned by their parents and totally dependent on Tan and her staff of 30, the children of Agent Orange have little hope of a normal life.
Vietnam has been pressing the United States for years for compensation for victims of the defoliant, but Washington is reluctant to admit liability, fearful of a slew of lawsuits. "The Americans have not helped us at all. It costs $1,500 to diagnose a child as being deformed by Agent Orange," said a government official who asked not to be identified. "Why would the Americans want to help us prove what they don't want to admit?," he said.
The defoliant was sprayed all over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by the United States from 1962 to 1971. The toxic cocktail of herbicides and dioxin was dumped onto the verdant jungles of Vietnam to kill the foliage and cut off supply lines from the north to the south through the Ho Chi Minh trail. The problem is that the dioxin did not disperse as expected, and is still contaminating villagers nearly 30 years after the war ended.
Invisible reminder of war
Duyen's father Do Duc served in the military from 1987 to 1991 near Pleiku town, one of the areas most affected by Agent Orange. He believes he was contaminated while living in a heavily sprayed area and complains of itchy skin, loss of memory and fatigue. Apart from a few statues of fiercely patriotic Vietnamese women holding AK47's, there are few visible relics of the war in what was once the demilitarized zone on the 17th parallel that divided the north from the American-backed south Vietnam.
But Agent Orange is an invisible, more insidious, reminder of war. Upstairs at the Tu Du hospital's Peace Village, Pham Thi Thuy Linh, 10, clutches at a ballpoint pen with her toes. She was born without arms. Linh's brow is etched in concentration as she writes, and she is oblivious of the misery that surrounds her. Her writing is surprisingly neat.
Just behind a little group of studious children, a boy with black, scaly skin that hangs loosely off his young body fights with the white strips of linen that tie his hands to the iron frame of his bed. Held in limbo to stop him from banging his head against the wall continuously, he resorts to kicking the bed constantly, desperately. Below him, on the linoleum floor, two baby boys stare from bulbous eyes set in bulbous heads.
A boy with one leg and two-fingered claws; a girl with a giant head on her tiny, skeletal frame; a girl rubbing the blank space where her eyes should be. Dr Nguyen leads the way to a padlocked room where she keeps the remains of children that did not survive the poisoning in their mother's womb.
Malformed fetuses
Yellow jars line the walls, each containing one or more deformed fetuses. The tiny figures are joined, malformed, gruesome. The U.S. says more studies are needed on the effects of Agent Orange and has declined to discuss compensation, although some U.S. veterans have successfully sued the makers of the product over their health problems.
In late January, three Vietnamese brought a suit against the makers of Agent Orange, a possible first step in the fight for compensation. Throughout Quang Tri the stories are the same. All of the victims were exposed to Agent Orange during the war, and all were told by their doctors that Agent Orange had caused their disease.
Keith Chau, a businessman in Dong Ha who recently returned to Vietnam after living in the United States, says he used to spray Agent Orange on his own people while serving with the South Vietnamese and U.S. forces. Chau is sure he and his comrades didn't know the damage they were causing. "We didn't know s---. We just dumped it, and the Americans didn't have any idea what they were doing" either, he says.
By Thomas White - Reuters - February 16, 2004
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