Understandings and practices of hygiene and environmental sanitation of some ethnic minorities in Vietnam

Abstract

This study shows the limited understandings of ethnic minority people with regard to using various kinds of sanitary toilets, techniques for constructing the toilets, the bad influence of human waste on their health, and their hand-washing practices before eating and after deficating and urinating. The ethnic minorities have few sanitary toilets. There are different reasons for this, including people’s underdeveloped customs, limited understandings, low educational levels and the weak implementation of socialization with regards to environmental sanitation as well as low investment in environmental sanitation in many areas. To solve this problem, it is important to enhance many forms of communication and education in order to change the behavior of the ethnic people. Some means to this end include bringing into play their customary laws, giving priority to the people who have low educational levels and live in remote areas, having active participation from the authorities, organizations and other people in these activities, undertaking  work with households, combining the movement of cultural villages and health, setting up technical standards for the toilets which are appropriate to the household economic situations and ecological conditions and customs of ethnic minorities, and giving the people financial aid from different sources to build the sanitary toilets