Remote mountain villagers in Central North Vietnam are enjoying access to clean water for the first time. East Asia Program Coordinator Christine Gregory tells of the mammoth task to build water supply systems for these isolated communities.

Ky Son district is one of the poorest and most remote districts in Nghe An province in Central North Vietnam. There are no roads to connect more than 80 of the 185 isolated villages here.

To get to the villages of Luu Tan and Huoi Hoc, we first travelled by car from Hanoi for 11 hours. Then came a 90 minute four-wheel-drive up the mountains, before the road stopped and we swapped to motorbikes, following a narrow track for about an hour to reach the first village, Huoi Hoc. Luu Tan is only accessible on foot, a further 90 minutes up the mountain. I was just beginning to realise the difficulties of providing services to these communities.

We were there with our project partners Oxfam Hong Kong and the People's Committee of Ky Son District to see how the communities' new water supply systems were going. This joint-Oxfam project, partially funded by an AusAID grant, was completed in June 2005 and now supplies clean water to 591 poor people from ethnic minorities who make up most of the district population.

Around 95% of households in the two villages fall under the national poverty line and about 83% of the province is mountainous, making it very difficult to supply basic services such as roads, health facilities and schools. On a daily basis, people can walk up to 30km over mountainous terrain to access local markets.

The main water sources in these villages are small streams and rainwater, neither of which is safe for drinking or washing. Water-borne diseases resulting in diarrhoea and other gastro-intestinal problems are common, particularly among the children, and the women have to walk up to three hours a day to haul water back to their houses for cooking.

The new gravity-fed water supply systems involve directing water from the mountain streams, via a concrete catchment area and through a series of pipes, to the villages. In the villages, shared bathrooms have been constructed for every five to eight households. These have three separate taps for washing and water collection and a separate shower.

Community members from both villages were involved in the project's initial planning and consultation stages to ensure the systems met their needs. They then held working bees to build the systems, hauling raw materials such as concrete, rocks and steel piping up the mountain on foot.

Once the new systems were in place, the villagers received training in management and maintenance to ensure the water keeps flowing and also in good personal hygiene and sanitation practices to reduce the risk of disease.

Oxfam Hong Kong Project Manager Nguyen Thi Oanh said that before the training, people in the village used water from a nearby stream, even though pigs and cows freely defecated close to it.

"People, especially the children, often became sick as many were drinking contaminated water from the stream," she said.

"Since providing the water supplies and the training, people have been much more inclined to boil their water which will lead to significant improvements in their health."

Representatives from Luu Tan village commented that since the facilities have been built, the workload of women has significantly decreased. One villager said, "We now have much more free time in the day to do other things and we feel much healthier and cleaner. Beforehand, it was very difficult to bathe. We had to use the stream and because it was not very private, women in particular were less inclined to bathe often."

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