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Photo taken by USAID in 2011 during a presentation on UXO and Agent Orange at the launch of a previous US-funded clean-up project. Danang Airport, Vietnam. RICHARD NYBERG / USAID / AFP

In Vietnam, the United States has just launched a $ 183 million clean-up campaign on a former orange agent storage site, a defoliant containing dioxin used during the war and whose effects are still causing problems today. cancers and malformations.

With our correspondent in Ho Chi Minh City, Frédéric Noir

Good Hoa, a name fallen into oblivion. Yet during the Vietnam War, it was one of the main US air bases in South Vietnam. It was also one of Orange Agent's main storage locations.

Between 1962 and 1971, the US military flew about 80 million liters of this agent to the forests and fields to prevent the advance of the communist army.

The product has infiltrated groundwater and rivers. According to Hanoi, about 3 million Vietnamese still suffer today, including 150,000 people with congenital malformations.

In Bien Hoa, more than 500,000 cubic meters of dioxin contaminated soil and sediment. Quantities that are four times greater than the volume cleaned at Danang Airport, another heavily impacted site where decontamination operations lasted six years.

This work is taking place in a general climate of warming diplomatic relations between the two former enemy countries, Vietnam being in the region the strongest opponent to the land claims of Beijing, which continues to extend its grip on the sea of Southern China, a true crossroads, highly strategic, of world trade.

► Also to listen: Agent orange in Vietnam, the beginnings of decontamination (2011)