UNICEF aids the children

Thank you for printing Linda Feldmann's timely article ``UNICEF: `revolution' in child survival,'' Dec. 11. The Monitor is one of so few to cover the 40th anniversary of UNICEF and the release of UNICEF's State of the World's Children 1987. The statistics quoted are outstanding. Specifically, a figure of 14,000 deaths of children each day in 1980 is now down to 10,000 per day worldwide. Let us pray that UNICEF's goal of 1,000 by the decade's end is met.

The article helps to point out that these atrocious deaths need not occur. We have the necessary technologies to end deaths by starvation if we continue to call upon our will to get this goal achieved.

Factual, up-to-date articles like yours help dispel the out-of-date myths about hunger that permeate the mind of society. Larry Blomberg Totowa, N.J.

Why is it that when programs to save children are mentioned, teaching family planning and child spacing is not mentioned? This too saves lives of children! A child has a much greater chance of survival if the next sibling's birth is postponed, or prevented if the family does not want more children, as is the case with many third-world families. The parents should be taught and given the means to limit their families when the children are immunized or revived by rehydration. Sarah G. Epstein Washington

Recognize Vietnam If Adm. James Lyons Jr. is concerned about Soviet domination of the Western Pacific, the United States should begin the normalization of relations with Vietnam [``US Navy's Pacific Fleet chief gives sweeping view of his region,'' Dec. 11].

A few of the pluses for recognition by the United States would include a fostering of Vietnam's historical wish for independence, facilitation of the search for missing American servicemen, relieving of the suffering of the people of South Vietnam - once our allies - and help in renewing ties of Vietnamese in this country with their relatives in Vietnam.

Some of the 3 million Americans who passed through Vietnam might also wish to return as tourists, as they did in the Pacific after World War II.

Normalization could offer more than the vacuum that now exists. Walter Robertson Round Rock, Ariz.