Mar 6, 2008, 11:23 GMT
Hanoi - Tea Leoni, the Hollywood star of Spanglish and You Kill Me, spoke in Hanoi Thursday on behalf of a fundraising drive for disabled Vietnamese children, including those harmed by the Vietnam War-era chemical defoliant Agent Orange.
UNICEF, the UN children's organization, aims to raise four to five million dollars to benefit programs for Vietnamese children with disabilities in three regions, including Danang, the site of a former US airbase heavily contaminated by Agent Orange.
Leoni, a celebrity ambassador for UNICEF, was in Danang Wednesday visiting a daycare centre for disabled youth, and a community-based rehabilitation programme in a rural village nearby.
'There was one physical therapist there who had been paid no salary for over a year,' Leoni said, praising the woman's efforts to seek out disabled patients in a scattered rural environment. 'She was acting above the call of duty.'
'The problem is that this rehabilitation programme exists only in one commune, not in all 64 communes in the district,' said UNICEF Vietnam representative Jesper Morch.
Morch said UNICEF's programme would try to create comprehensive education and health programmes for disabled children to serve as 'best-practices' models which Vietnam's government could eventually extend nationwide.
The link between childhood disability and Agent Orange in Vietnam has been a controversial subject for decades.
The US sprayed millions of gallons of the defoliant to clear jungles during the Vietnam War. It contained high levels of toxic dioxin, which has since been linked to a number of illnesses, particularly cancers. Background levels of dioxin in the environment remain high in 'hotspots' where large quantities of Agent Orange were used.
Vietnam's government says dioxin from Agent Orange is responsible for elevated levels of birth defects in Vietnam. But the US has demurred, saying the science is inconclusive and that it is impossible to link any particular person's illness to dioxin from Agent Orange.
A US appeals court last month dismissed a suit against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange by Vietnamese who said they were victims of the chemical. But the US Congress last year allocated 3 million dollars for Agent Orange-related cleanup and research in Vietnam, and American charities and foundations have been increasingly eager to address the issue.
The Ford Foundation, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, and the non-governmental US-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange now advocate aid for disabled Vietnamese regardless of what caused their conditions.
Leoni acknowledged the problem of causality. 'Around issues of children with disabilities, there always seem to be conflicts over insufficient data.'
'UNICEF works at the local level without considering who is a victim of Agent Orange and who is just disabled,' Morch said.
The US's slowness to address the issue has led to some cynicism among Vietnamese.
'Many international organizations have said they are willing to support the Agent Orange victims in Vietnam, but mostly spiritual support, not material support,' said Mai The Chinh, an official at the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange.
'I think the best way to help the disabled is to give the money directly to them,' Chinh continued. 'If not, it might be spent on expensive hotel rooms when some high-ranking US officials come to Vietnam to talk about the matter.'
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