The relief, worth USD150,000, which World Vision was entrusted with by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), will be implemented from June until the end of July 2016, distributing 20,000 bottles of drinking water and 1,250 plastic water tanks to needy people. Each family will receive sixteen 20-litre bottles of drinking water and one 1,000-litre water tank.
Beside evidence of massive crop losses, there is an increase in cases of communicable diseases in children, women and the elderly, including respiratory diseases, dermatitis, diarrhoea and sore eyes, as people have resorted to using polluted water for their daily needs, according to an Inter-agency Assessment in Binh Thuan province led by World Vision with the participation of the Disaster Management Centre, Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development and the National Committee for Disaster Prevention and Control in March 2016.
“Our urgent relief is to contribute to containing diseases arising from the lack of adequate water supply for human use. We’re seeking additional funding opportunities to leverage our support to people in need of food aid, hygienic water supply facilities and early economic recovery in Binh Thuan and Dak Nong provinces,” said Le Van Duong, World Vision’s National Coordinator of Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs in Vietnam.      
Apart from the UNDP-funded aid, World Vision has undertaken the initial response with its own resources of USD80,000 for more than 5,000 thirsty children and adults in Ham Thuan Bac and Bac Binh districts since early June. From mid-June until July, nearly 2,000 people who have faced crop failure in Bac Binh district will also benefit from the World Vision-funded support focusing on food aid and domestic water supplies.
The prolonged drought and saline intrusion as a consequence of El Niño in the Mekong Delta, South Central Coastal and Central Highland regions has led to serious groundwater depletion in water-scarce districts, according to the assessment. Of the estimated two million people suffering acute water shortage, over one million are women and 520,000 are children./.