A team of Vietnamese and French doctors has operated on nine babies suffering from paralysis in their arms.

Dr. Nguyen Bao Tuong, head of Ward of Orthopaedics at Children’s Hospital I, said the team of orthopaedic experts operated on nine babies, three to nine month old, with paralysis of the brachial plexus of nerves that connect the neck and arm.

Doctors said they successfully grafted nerves from the babies’ legs, the first operations of their kind in Vietnam.

In other health news, Cho Ray hospital said a recent survey had showed that patients with larynx cancer were getting younger. Previously most sufferers were aged 60 – 70 but now more than half of them are between 40 -60.

Doctors blamed late diagnosis, smoking and drinking alcohol. They said 86 per cent of patients were diagnosed late.