Fifth Congress of Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange held

Lieutenant General Nguyen Huu Chinh, former political commissar of the Ministry of National Defence’s General Department of Technology, has been elected President of the VAVA for the new tenure.

The congress agreed that former Vice State President Nguyen Thi Binh will continue serving as the association’s honorary president in the new term.

During the 2018–2023 tenure, VAVA chapters nationwide raised more than 2.27 trillion VND (93.4 million USD) in cash and kind. They have spent over 2.16 trillion VND on supporting AO victims, built 3,973 houses for the target group, presented 24,550 scholarships, worth over 19.58 billion VND in total, to children of the victims, given free check-ups and medicine to 644,000 people, and helped thousands of victims to secure livelihoods and seek jobs.

From 1961 to 1971, the US army sprayed more than 80 million litres of herbicides, 44 million litres of which was AO, containing nearly 370 kilogrammes of dioxin, over southern Vietnam. As a result, around 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to the toxic chemical. Many of them have died, while millions of their descendants are living with deformities and diseases as a direct result of the chemical’s effects.