The Hearts of the People

Testifying before Senator Edward Kennedy's Judiciary Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees last week, wit ness after witness reported on the plight of Vietnamese civilians engulfed by the war. Their point was not that the U.S. ought to end the misery by quitting the fight and get out of Viet Nam. They were all there to argue that the U.S. will lose the war if it does not double its efforts to care for Viet Nam's hordes of refugees and civilian wounded.

A team of doctors sent to Viet Nam by the Agency for International Development reported that less than half of the 100,000 civilians wounded each year ever make it to Viet Nam's 58 "hospitals." Those who do generally wind up sleeping on corridor floors, or two or three to a bed. The hospitals are no better than sheds, rife with epidemics. Water and electricity are limited to a few hours a day. Some of the injured wait up to a year for surgery. Through neglect, there are almost twice as many amputees among South Vietnamese civilians as there were among American soldiers in World War II.

Limping Along. Fordham Dean James R. Dumpson, who led an AID-sponsored month-long tour of refugee centers, estimated that the war has left nearly 2,000,000 South Vietnamese homeless. Some are North Vietnamese looking for a better life in the South. Many lowland peasants and mountain people flee their villages to escape Viet Cong control or because they are in the path of combat operations. Others are forced to move from battle areas by the government. Nearly half are children. Plowing into AID-staffed centers at the rate of 38,000 a month, the refugees are turning to gang warfare and prostitution. A General Accounting Office report released at the hearings claimed that only half the homeless are getting the 14 ounces of rice and the 5$ a day that the Vietnamese government should be doling out. Less than a quarter of some refugees receive their $42 resettlement allowance and six-month rice supply.

AID's operation, limping along with its staff at two-thirds strength, provided dwellings for only 4,347 of 28,000 newly created refugee families last year. The U.S. budget for refugees has crept up to $35.6 million in fiscal 1968, an annual figure that is about half the daily U.S. expenditure on the war. Noting that the medical budget dropped from $37 million to $34 million this year, Kennedy said: "It's shocking to me, this complete lack of any kind of priority for the human problems."

New Tactics. During the past year, Kennedy held closed hearings on civilian casualties and privately prodded the Administration to improve conditions. With few tangible results to show beyond building starts on three civilian hospitals, Kennedy has now switched tactics. He is calling public hearings and saying that the war cannot be won without more humane treatment of civilians.

Dr. John Knowles, director general of Massachusetts General Hospital and spokesman for AID's medical team, recommended doubling the U.S. medical budget, bringing in more U.S. surgeons, training more Vietnamese doctors and starting an immunization program. For the refugees, witnesses urged a massive U.S. social-welfare program staffed by an augmented AID team. Said Dumpson: "If we don't give high priority to the needs of the people, I can see only real chaos and real suffering and losing the hearts and minds of the people."

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