 | | INCLUSION
"My friend might have found my eyes peculiar"
Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, governments have a duty to make sure that children with disabilities are fully included in society.
Article 23 of the Convention says governments should recognise, "the right of the child to special care and shall encourage and ensure the extension... of assistance..."
Here a government is trying hard to fulfil that duty, but there are still major social prejudices to overcome.
In Vietnam, caring for disabled children has been a focus in government education policies. In today's market economy, the authorities manage to combine government subsidies with contributions from the private sector and foreign partners to help disabled children to integrate better into society.
Vietnam has a population of 78 million. According to the Ho ChiMinh City Blind Association, there are over 600,000 visually impaired and blind people in the country. It estimates that the main causes are vitamin A deficiency, measles, blindness at birth, cataracts, injuries at work and at war.
Blindness in most children is caused by measles and vitamin A deficiency.
In 2000, the International Trachoma Initiative was extended to Vietnam. Trachoma, a blinding disease, is infectious and affects millions of people in the world, with women and children more likely to suffer it than men. Children under five are the most susceptible.
Trachoma is widespread in poor areas lacking clean water and hygiene.
In the following report for A World for Children, Quynh Nhu, a sight-impaired student, and her classmates of the Nguyen Dinh Chieu Special School in Ho ChiMinh City, discuss their concerns.
The government is encouraging integrated classes to help sight-impaired and other disabled children join in the process of studying with those who are not.
This practice has been criticised by parents and educators as pulling the quality of so-called 'normal' education down.
Quynh Nhu is 12. She wants to further her schooling as much as she can. Her aim is to complete both secondary school and high school. Her long-term goal is to become a teacher for sight-impaired children, just like she is.
She has heard about the difficulties blind children face at integrated schools and hopes to obtain some advice from fellow schoolmates. | |  Listen to Quynh Nhu and her friends' story in Vietnamese | | 
Hello. My name is Quynh Nhu. I am 12-years-old. I am a blind pupil of Nguyen Dinh Chieu School for the blind. I am very pleased to... introduce my schoolmates.
Nguyen Dinh Chieu School educates pupils from kindergarten to grade nine of secondary school.
...I am happy with my school, though at first I was a bit upset.
At the start of the school year, my teacher seated me next to a friend who was supposed to help me by reading and copying what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.
My friend might have found my eyes peculiar. She must have thought I looked curiously cruel and maybe that scared her.
Anyway, she kept reading all the lessons for me so seriously. You know, I don't like to be so serious. I like cracking jokes. It took some time before she got used to me. 
Quynh Nhu then hears Anh Minh, who has been at the Nguyen Dinh Chieu School for three years. She is playing the mandolin.
Anh Minh, 14-years-old, is blind and has brain damage. She tells the story of how she became sight-impaired:
When I was much younger, I used to have good sight like everyone else. But when I was 11, I got a brain disease.
My parents took me to a private doctor who gave a wrong diagnosis.
Then they took me to a hospital in my hometown. The hospital also gave me the wrong treatment... too many antibiotics. You know the bottles of antibiotic they injected into me could fill up a plastic bag that could hold four pounds.
Then I could hardly see anything. I was almost blind.
My dad made a special request to the vice director of the hospital to transfer me to a better hospital in Ho ChiMinh City, but I was already blind when I left the hospital in my hometown. The city hospital diagnosed my brain disease, but I have been blind ever since.
My family did not have much money at all [and could not send her to a city hospital earlier on].
We just relied on doctors. We didn't realise that they ever made a wrong diagnosis.
Nguyen Dinh Chieu School has a massage department. It enables older blind pupils to practise massage techniques and for the school to obtain extra income. Anh Tuan is 18. She completed her apprenticeship on massaging skills in this department and recently finished high school.
Anh Tuan has been to many different schools and has achieved a high degree of education as her story tells:
I went to Tri Tri Elementary School and Hoang Van Thu Secondary, and then The Education Centre for high school. Other schools would not admit blind children because they don't have appropriate teaching methods for the blind and the teachers are worried about their assigned targets and goals... and so on. They think that blind kids would let them down on these.
Normal massage services won't let blind people work for them. You just can't get a job with them... because one can't see. They won't take [blind people]. | | | Listen to Quynh Nhu and her friends' story in Vietnamese | | |  |  |
 Vietnam supports the integration of children with special needs into the educational system, in particular kindergarten and primary schools. However the country does not have an official policy on educating children with disabilities.
According to Enabling Education Network (EENET), set up by the agency Save The Children, UK, there are some 80 special schools in Vietnam. They assist children with learning difficulties, and sensory and physical impairments.
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