
Hanoi (VNA) – Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh, who is also President ofthe Council of the National Fund for Vietnamese Children (NFVC), visited andpresented gifts to children with cleft lip and palate at the Vietnam – Cuba hospitalin Hanoi on April 20.
Eightygifts, worth 500,000 VND (22 USD) each, were delivered to the children, who arecurrently under treatment of an orthopaedic surgery programme organised by thehospital and Operation Smile.
The programme offers cleft lip and palate surgeries for about 100 children freeof charge this time.
VicePresident Thinh urged doctors, nurses and families to care for the children andhelp them recover after operations.
Shesaid she is looking forward to further engagement of sponsors in the programmefor the sake of the young generation.
Everyyear, about 2,000 Vietnamese children are born with the deformities.
Since1994, the NFVC launched free corrective operations for the group and extendedthe initiative in 1997 by cooperating with Operation Smile.
TheNFVC has so far supported nearly 30,000 children, with operation costsamounting to almost 70 billion VND (3.08 million USD).
OperationSmile has carried out operations on nearly 40,000 children with facial deformitiesin Vietnam over the past 27 years.
Itplans to carry out 2,500 surgeries this year.-VNA