THANHNIEN NEWS, AUGUST 8, 2006
The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin said Monday it would send two delegates to an international conference on Agent Orange and dioxins in Oslo, Norway, this month.
The latest studies on the effects of dioxins on Vietnamese, like the higher rate of malformation in victims’ descendants, will be presented at the conference to be held on.
Also on Monday the association’s deputy chairman, Nguyen Trong Nhan, met the president of the Germany-Vietnam Friendship Association, Guenter Jiesensfeld, who promised assistance for building a child care center for agent orange/dioxins-affected kids in Da Nang city.
Two million Vietnamese are thought to be suffering from the after-effects of exposure to Agent Orange, according to the association.
During the Vietnam War, the US army sprayed an estimated 79 million liters of defoliants, destroying over three million hectares of forests in southern Vietnam.
Exposure to the dioxins has been associated with severe birth defects and certain rare, fatal diseases in humans, including leukemia, Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, cancer, dermatological complications, and mental retardation, according to veterans advocacy groups.

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