HCM CITY — After successful campaigns in 2010 and 2011, the third Understanding the Heart programme to raise money for heart surgery for poor children and disadvantaged people began last week.

This year it will feature a programme called Connection of Million Hearts on August 15, launch of the Understanding the Heart Fund on August 24, Understanding the Heart talk shows at universities in HCM City and Ha Noi in September and October, and Talk Shows for Businesses in HCM City and Ha Noi in October and November.

At a meeting held to introduce the programme organised by the Understanding the Heart Charity Association in New York on April 4, Le Hoai Trung, head of the Vietnamese permanent delegation to the UN, said more than 10,000 babies are born with congenital heart diseases every year in Viet Nam, and only 30 percent of them get medical treatment.

He called on charities and kind-hearted people in the US to support Vietnamese child patients through the programme.

The association also organised a meeting in April to appraise Vietnamese students at the Centre for French Culture in Paris about the programme.-VNS