GREEN CROSS starts its "AGENT ORANGE" campaign in favor of the Vietnamese children.

"Agent Orange" is a powerful defoliant that was largely used during the Vietnam War, in order to defoliate the forests that where hiding the Vietcong soldiers. This chemical product contained a poison dangerous for health and environment: the dioxin. Its disastrous effects appeared about 3 to 4 years after its use, causing malformations on about 75'000 people. And still nowadays, 25 years after the war, 3'600 children come to life each year with severe deformities, fissures in the throat, double rows of teeth, and other muscular atrophies. The growing infertility of the young women, as well as urological problems, are also attributed to Agent Orange. Effectively, important amounts of dioxin have been found into the grease and liver of the Vietnamese victims. This weedkiller harms human beings by seeping from water or soil into their food.

Social politic in favor of the handicapped almost non-existent in Vietnam.

The efforts of the Vietnamese government are focused towards the economical growth and the exportation industry, leaving aside the social politic in favor of the handicapped. Help is all the more needed as the handicapped children are considered as monsters in Vietnam and are therefore hidden by their ashamed families, and condemned to a vegetative life. Other are sent to beg in the streets, and are punished through maltreatment, starvation and even abandonment, if they do not bring back home enough money.

GREEN CROSS helps with the motto "To go signifies Life". Its first goal consists in providing 750 kids with orthopedic care. This project started in 1998. In Hanoi and Hai Phong, two centers have been built in order to welcome these children. These centers, as well as the equipment and the staff, are financed by the German Department of Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Green Cross is therefore able to dedicate the totality of the donations into a direct assistance in favor of the victims of Agent Orange.

The program involves the medical aspects of the diagnosis and the therapy, the supplying of the appropriate orthopedic tools, the rehabilitation and transport expenses, as well as those needed to host the children and some of their parents.

All these costs represent, in general, an amount of $150.- maximum per victim! Such a small sum corresponds to the average income per individual in Vietnam, which explains why most of the families cannot afford such an expense for their child contaminated with dioxin. However the importance of such an assistance lies in their chance to reintegrate society.