Project Concern in Vietnam

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32531, 15 February 1971, Page 18

Project Concern in Vietnam

(By

ARNOLD ABRAMS)

SAIGON.

While Government troops and Communist guerrillas struggle for the hearts and minds of the people in Tuyen Due province, 150 miles north-east of here, a. small group of workers, concentrates on their■ lungs, livers and intestines.

These workers are part of Project Concern, an inter-] nationalist organisation whose, aim, its leaders say, is to provide medical aid in areas; where it is most sorelyj needed.

Lien Hiep Village in Tuyen Due is such an area: a somewhat isolated district in South Vietnam’s central highlands. The majority of the district’s 50,000 people are of non-Vietnamese stock, some 17,000 Montagnard tribesmen being foremost among them.

Montagnards are a primitive and proud people whose ills traditionally have been treated more with witchcraft than with medicine. Sorcerers in the area have been supplanted by such men as Thomas Cook, an American doctor who joined Project Concern as much to fulfil a sense of adventure as to “lend a hand” through humanitarianism. Cook is 33 years old and is not a stranger to South Vietnam. He served here with the United States Air Force in 1964. Like many of I

[his colleagues in this type of 1 'work, he cannot provide a t fast answer for his presence i I in Lien Hiep. i

Help and training

“Helping people is one reason,” says Cook. “But I didn’t have to come all the ]way out here to do that. 'Wanting to break out of the routine at home is part of it.”

Cook’s wife is a nurse and together they head a 60member staff which handles [dozens of cases daily in a , recently built hospital and | clinic. i The staff is drawn from [seven nations. Its core is two doctors and five registered nurses as well as a pharmacist and laboratory technician. The doctors earn about SUS2OO a month, the others around USSIOO.

All staff personnel get free ! food and accommodation, and they are brought to South ; Vietnam at the expense of Project Concern. As well as providing medical services, the staff conducts a programme to train local tribesmen in preventive medicine. After completing a six-month course, trainees are qualified to return to their hamlets and put knowledge into practice. This, at least, is the concept of Project Concern's founder, an American doctor named James Tutpin who put aside a flourishing practice for broader humanitarian purposes. He established Project Concern in Hong Kong in 11962; since then branches

f have been formed in Mexico i and in America’s Appalachia ; region as well as South Vietnam.

Project Concern is claimed to be a non-political and non-profit organisation. It has a yearly budget exceed--Img SUSI million. Project : officials say all this comes in institutional and individual 1 contributions. At Lien Hiep, the sixbuilding complex contains I $U575,000 worth of equipment. There is a 60-bed hospital, an emergency room and a surgical unit. Since the surrounding area still is heavily contested, problems of equipment maintenance are increased by the calling cards of battle—bullets and shrapnel. The centre has been caught in crossfire several times, and according to Dr Cook, Viet Cong troops “have run right through here at night. Once, they set up a firing position outside the hospital.” Treat everyone Troops under the Viet Cong command have not attacked the complex directly, however, preferring to make occasional use of its services. “Viet Cong come in here for treatment,” Cook told a correspondent “They’re not hard to identify. They are strangers—young men, usually—suffering from the kind of illnesses you get from prolonged periods in the field.” Project Concern, he claims, treats suffering Viet Cong “as we treat everyone. We have professional obligations to fulfil and we also feel that continuing this programme should take top priority . . .” The Viet Cong, he points out have the power to put a quick stop to this kind of altruistic reasoning. Nevertheless there is no guarantee of good-will on the part of the tough young men and women who make up the ranks of the Viet Cong. Security problems forced the Project Concern base to move to Lien Hiep from Dam Pao, site of the organisation’s first centre in this country, about 15 miles distant. In one attack on Dam Pao several months ago (June, 1970), one medical worker was fatally injured and hospital facilities were badly damaged. The -raid left Dr Cook and his wife with some unpleasant memories. “A group of Viet Cong were standing outside our window,” says Dr Cook, who had huddled with his wife under their bed for three hours until the raiders withdrew. “They were so close we could have reached out and touched them.” Although security remains questionable, the Dam Pao hospital still is partly used because of the demand for medical services in that'area. • There, as at Lien Hiep, com-, mon ailments are pneumonia,, tuberculosis, meningitis, rheumatic fever, emphysema and leprosy. Conditions common in , Western societies ulcers, , heart disease and cancer—are rare in this countryside, ■ according to Cook and his ; colleagues. He believes the ; reason for this lies in the life- ; style of the people: “For all ; their hardships, they don’t ; have the anxiety-filled lives i that some Westerners have.” —lntrasia Press Agency.