Statement by the President Following a Meeting With Dr. Howard Rusk on Health and Welfare Needs in South Viet-Nam.
I HAVE had a most profitable discussion with Dr. Howard Rusk about the immense health and welfare needs of the people of South Viet-Nam.
Dr. Rusk has agreed to go to Viet-Nam at my request to survey the situation and to report to me his recommendations as to how we can best strengthen and expand our efforts to relieve human suffering there. The needs of the Vietnamese people are intensified today by the distress of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been driven from their homes by the Viet Cong.
Dr. Rusk will look into the several successful programs that are being undertaken by our American private welfare organizations in cooperation with the Vietnamese Government. And he will explore with all relevant people and agencies the opportunities that exist for a new and mighty people-to-people effort by Americans in our time-honored tradition of humaneness and compassion.
Dr. Rusk is a great patriot of wide experience in advancing human welfare, both at home and abroad. I am deeply grateful that he is willing to undertake this assignment.
Note: On August 30 the White House announced that the President had asked Dr. Howard Rusk, Director of the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at New York University, to go to Viet-Nam to survey the possibilities for expanding and strengthening the work of private agencies in helping the Vietnamese people. The release stated that Dr. Rusk's experience in organizing the American-Korean Foundation made him highly qualified for the mission.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President Following a Meeting With Dr. Howard Rusk on Health and Welfare Needs in South Viet-Nam. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/240732