UK announces major support for sanitation project in Vietnam

22 January 2010

The UK will help improve the lives of thousands of people in Vietnam by providing basic toilets and hygiene facilities, International Development Minister Mike Foster announced today.

The Department for International Development (DFID), together with other international donors, will participate in a Vietnamese government-led programme to tackle a chronic shortage of latrines in the country through a £17 million grant.

The money will also help spread good hygiene practices such as regular hand washing with soap.

Despite recent good progress, latest statistics show that less than 2% of the poorest in Vietnam have a toilet and only one in six people in rural areas wash their hands with soap.

Many schools and clinics do not have any toilets at all. Washing hands with soap reduces the incidence of diarrhoea by almost half and pneumonia by almost a quarter.

International Development Minister Mike Foster said: “Millions of lives are lost needlessly every year because people do not have access to a toilet or somewhere to wash their hands.

"The UK has already proved that good hygiene and building decent latrines dramatically reduces this loss of life.

“Our engagement in this programme will help save countless lives in Vietnam by providing them with the basic sanitation and means to enjoy healthier lives.”

The programme will help make sure that by 2010:

• 85% of the rural population use clean water.
• 70% of rural households have hygienic latrines.
• 70% of rural households have hygienic livestock pens.
• All rural primary schools, kindergartens, nurseries and clinics have access to clean water and hygienic latrines. 

Currently 2.5 billion people have little or no access to basic sanitation across the world.

Four thousand people, mostly children, die every day from diarrhoeal diseases caused in part by unsafe water, lack of access to basic sanitation facilities and poor hygiene.

This project comes as new figures show that the UK has helped more than 27 million people across Asia and Africa to adopt better hand washing and hygiene practices since 2008, when DFID launched its water and sanitation policy.

This has been achieved by improving access to clean water and basic sanitation in the countries where DFID works.

The UK is also strengthening international efforts to tackle lack of clean water and poor sanitation through the Global Framework for Action.

Announced by the UK and the Netherlands last year, this will ensure that all available resources are better targeted towards improving water and sanitation for the poorest.