We would return to Saigon from these weekly trips to the orphanages with fifteen to twenty critically ill infants, often losing a child on the way. These infants had no identity - they were abandoned as newborns and background information was simply unknown child, born of unknown parents, and abandoned. A death certificate for such an infant would read - anonymous. At our center, our medical staff would admit these abandoned infants with a complete medical examination and at this time they would be assigned a "nursery name." To us, the giving of this name symbolized for the first time the individuality of this child.

It was at this time our struggle for the infant's life began - a struggle too often lost. Lost because at times, even in Saigon, there was a shortage of medical equipment and supplies. Lost because of the times we were turned away at the hospital's door with a critically ill infant in our arms. Lost because of lack of medicines, when we had tons of supplies hopelessly tied up in Customs. Lost because of Pneumosistis Carini, a disease rarely seen in the United States but a prime killer of the babies Viet Nam bore. Lost because in 1975, even though we had the medical knowledge, we were forced to use 1945 medical techniques. Lost because of poverty so severe that the newborn child was critically underweight and lacking almost any natural immunity. Lost because American-conquered diseases such as measles were killers of epidemic proportion in Viet Nam. Perhaps saddest of all were those children who were lost because they simply lacked the will to live.