Aid to Vietnam
Sir: I noticed the appeal for donations to equip the Ky Anh Hospital in Vietnam, published by the British Hospital for Vietnam Committee in the classified advertisement section of the Spectator on 24 December, 1977. No doubt the Vietnamese Government (or more correctly, the North Vietnamese Government) welcomes such aid, which means that instead of spending national resources on such tiresome diversions as the health and welfare of the people, it can spend it on guns and the waging of internal and external war.
I should like to suggest that before pros pective donors Write out their cheques, they read the article by Dr Dennis Duncanson, reader in South East Asian Studies at the University of Kent, in the Listener of 5 May, 1977. The article was titled 'How Saigon was won'. In the penultimate paragraph he quotes `. . the regulations for medical rehabilitation of the war-wounded announced in the Hanoi People's Daily a few months ago: under the regulations treatment is reserved for the wounded who fought with Generals Tra and Dung — those who fought against them, being traitors, are not entitled to a share'. I wonder whether
the British Hospital for Vietnam Committee, or the committee for any other hos pital in Vietnam for that matter, publishes
such advertisements in Pravda or Com
munist Chinese newspapers.
Michael Gluckman, 30a Pallinghurst Road, Westcliff, Johannesburg 2193, South Africa
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