The Thuan An Centre For The Deaf in Song Be, just north of Ho Chi Minh City, has been the main focus of our work in Vietnam to date. It is a relatively large school with over 280 deaf children in residence, of whom nearly forty are orphans. The headmistress of one of the smaller deaf schools in Saigon came out to this school to sit in on our training sessions and we are looking to upgrade the testing facilities in the school to make it a "Centre of Excellence". The photograph shows some of the children in the school. David Pither & Rodney Jack established a laboratory for manufacturing earmoulds. Although it has taken time for the staff to, "get the hang of it," the number of earmoulds being produced is increasing. So is the quality. The laboratory enables the school to make its own earmoulds within an hour of the impression being taken which is a significant improvement on the eight to ten months wait which was sometimes experienced previously. A visit was made to the School for Handicapped children in Can Tho in the deep south of Vietnam, and we are supplying donated hearing aids and cords. This picture of Diep Van Thanh shows the deformity of his right ear and we have just funded a set of CT scans to see if some surgical assistance might help him. Other medical equipment is required for the clinic which the school runs itself. Students are trained in aspects of manipulative therapy and Chinese medicine and locals pay for treatment on a donation basis. This earns about USD $30.00 a months for the two staff and four students running the clinic. The Thuan An school is now also a Centre for early intervention of hearing loss and two members of the early intervention staff were invited to an earmould manufacturing course run by David at the Pedagogic University campus in Ho Chi Minh City run in 1999 and sponsored by Kommittee Twee. Rodney Jack kindly purchased the equipment for a new earmould laboratory for the Early Intervention Centre at Thuan An and this facility is being used to train staff from other schools for the deaf and invention centres. In all, 24 people attended the earmould manufacturing course and these paricipants came from all over Vietnam. David has visited the Bach Mai hospital in Hanoi, in support of ENT surgeons, Mr Kevin Holwell of Albury and Mr Damian Connelly of Geelong. At the invitiation of Mr Holwell a number of trips have been made to Danang by David, where an earmould laboratory has been established in a local school which caters for Deaf Children and which is related to the Thuan An shcool. David has set up an earmould laboratory in the Danang General Hospital but Mr Terry Ryan, an audiometrist from Albury, has been mostly instrumental in setting up audiometric services. David arranged for the Australian Relief & Mercy Services to send a container of equipment to the new Eye Hospital in Danang run by Dr Pham Binh and which included four computers donated by Orica. Two of these computers and some specialised equipment were delivered to the Danang General Hospital and subsequently under the guidance of Mr Holwell, Fosters Breweries donated USD $25,000, (matched by the Australian High Commissioner) to rebuild the ENT Centre at the Danang General Hospital. The photo shows a young boy sporting the first custom made earmould made at the Danang General Hospital with a hearing aid fitted by David. The Head of ENT, Dr Huynh Ba Tan is at far right of photo. The photo shows David with some leading ladies, from institutions assisting disabled children, in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, on a study tour to Melbourne in July 2000. This was taken at a traditional Vietnamese dinner hosted in Melbourne by Rodney and Moon Jack in their honour. Equipment donations can be made through ARMS (Australian Relief and Mercy Services), contact Roger Nardi on 100356.1511@compuserve.com.