Heartbreaking pictures show even now babies in Vietnam - PHOTO

Canterbury born Francis Wade captured the distressing images at the Thi Nghe and Thien Phuoc orphanages in Saigon, which are home to children born decades after the war. Yet despite the conflict ending in 1971, the orphanages are caring for children suffering disabilities thought to be caused by a chemical used by U.S forces, which was sprayed on crops, plants and trees.In rural southern Vietnam, where much of the spraying of Agent Orange by US forces in the Vietnam War occurred, families still depend on children to work and create income.Many of the children end up in the care of the orphanages as their families cannot afford the burden of a disabled child and they are abandoned there. Mr Wade, a freelance journalist now based in Bangkok, explained: 'The very sad subtext to this all, and the reason why I visited the orphanages, is that many families in Vietnam, particularly in the rural areas that were sprayed with Agent Orange are too poor to carry the burden of a disabled child, and so abandon them at orphanages.'So the families living in areas where there's still heavy contamination have the double curse of being far more likely to produce disabled offspring, and not having the means to care for them.' Agent Orange is the combination of the code names for Herbicide Orange and Agent LNX, one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its chemical warfare programme, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971.Over the course of 10 years, American forces sprayed nearly 20million gallons of the chemical in Vietnam, Laos and parts of Cambodia in an effort to deprive guerrilla fighters of cover by destroying plants and trees where they could find refuge.The chemical was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. It got its name from the colour of the orange-striped 55-gallon barrels in which it was shipped to Asia.Among the illnesses contracted by people exposed to the dioxin are non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, several varieties of cancer, type 2 diabetes, soft tissue sarcoma, birth defects in children, spina bifida and reproductive abnormalities, to name a few.(dailymail.co.uk) ANN.Az