German humanitarian group helps Vietnamese people with physical deformities

Thanks to their support, dozens of people with mobility-impairments can now walk, play football or ride bicycles.

Although they are now in their 80s, two initiators of the organisation, Dirk Roosingh and Leo van Wittene, come to Vietnam twice a year to provide support, including paying for complete surgical assessment and any necessary operations. Their devotion to people with disabilities began when they visited Vietnam in the early 1990s and saw many disabled children, whose families were too poor to afford operations. Since then, Dirk and Leo have raised funds for disabled patients to have operations.

“We have paid privately for three patients a year. We see them in the roads when we walked out in Hoan Kiem,” Leo says. “We tried to look for translators who could translate Vietnamese. And they helped us and we went to the international hospital but there we had to pay high expenses. Then we came to Viet Duc (Vietnam-Germany) hospital, and here to Bach Mai hospital, we contacted the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF). Then we started to earn money in Germany. We gathered donations via radio and TV. Last year we auctioned paintings from the University of Art. They gave us paintings and we found a gallery to show all the paintings and sell them. We did not sell much, but we can earn enough from this to pay for the operations, and get money for our organisation.”

Patient Support Vietnam, established in 2003, has more than 45 members. Some of whom are still working and do not have time to travel. Dirk and Leo represent them o­n their trips to Vietnam, where they co-ordinate their donations, ensuring that the most needy get treated. Patient Support Vietnam works closely with VVAF and the Bach Mai Hospital Rehabilitation Centre to identify patients with impaired mobility. In the three years since it was established, Patient Support Vietnam has spent a total of more than US$40.000 helping more than 60 Vietnamese people in several northern provinces to obtain operations.

When they see the patients, some of whom are fully grown-up, Dirk and Leo wish they had found them earlier, so doctors could have done more for them. o­nce patient becomes an adult, operations can change some things, but the patient will never be 100 percent recoverable. This is o­ne of the reasons the two want to continue their humanitarian work in Vietnam.

“Mr. Leo is not married, I’m not married, so we don’t have children and our family is doing very well”, says Dirk. “When I come here I’m able to do things for these people. And I see them after o­ne year, they are much better, I’m very happy, it gives me a very good feeling. I don’t need money, but I need a feeling that I’ve done something good. It’s good for my heart because I’m doing it for me.”