It’s one of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region’s most impoverished communities. Nguyen Van Thanh is home to around 9,000 people or just over 2,100 families. Life is an incredibly basic hand-to-mouth existence and the people here are completely vulnerable to financial ruin, at the mercy of the unpredictable weather conditions affecting this part of rural Vietnam. Families make their living from agriculture, especially from rice farming. They have few or no tools and most of the work is still done by hand.
It’s absurdly hard work standing for hours at a time under the blistering sun in flooded paddy fields bent over double planting, pruning or picking the crops. The whole way across the Southern Mekong, this traditional mode of rice farming is highly labour intensive and low yielding.
In a story typical of rural Vietnam: poor families can’t afford to buy land and work as hired labourers. Ironically, as the rains pour the work dries up and there is no income whatsoever. Close to 300 families in this community have been identified as destitute by the local government, meaning their income per capita is less than $20 USD per month.
The slow economic growth of Nguyen Van Thanh has left its people with inadequate infrastructure and poor access to social services such as education and healthcare. But it’s the shortage of clean water and poor sanitation that pose the most serious threats to health.
In a story typical of rural Vietnam: poor families can’t afford to buy land and work as hired labourers. Ironically, as the rains pour the work dries up and there is no income whatsoever. Close to 300 families in this community have been identified as destitute by the local government, meaning their income per capita is less than $20 USD per month.
The slow economic growth of Nguyen Van Thanh has left its people with inadequate infrastructure and poor access to social services such as education and healthcare. But it’s the shortage of clean water and poor sanitation that pose the most serious threats to health.
The pipe connects water from the stream to the nearby family home where they use it for all their domestic purposes
Only half of the homes in the community have access to its single water station. The remaining homes use underground and surface water from the surrounding river and tributary streams. But overuse of chemicals in agricultural production together with an inadequate water treatment system for both industrial and domestic waste make the river and stream water unsafe for drinking.
Most of the families we spoke to were aware of the hazards of drinking the stream water and the many diseases contractible from doing so: polio, hepatitis and infections from parasites such as hookworm, to name just a few. Many families spend a high proportion of their meagre income just to buy water.
In the rainy season from May to November every year, they are able to use rain water for drinking purposes but without a tank they can’t collect enough for domestic use, such as washing clothes, cleaning and cooking.
Most of the families we spoke to were aware of the hazards of drinking the stream water and the many diseases contractible from doing so: polio, hepatitis and infections from parasites such as hookworm, to name just a few. Many families spend a high proportion of their meagre income just to buy water.
In the rainy season from May to November every year, they are able to use rain water for drinking purposes but without a tank they can’t collect enough for domestic use, such as washing clothes, cleaning and cooking.
One family collects rain water for use in these large ceramic pots outside their home