Rural water supply and sanitation is one of major programs for rural development applied not only in Vietnam but also in other developing countries. However, due to poor income and low knowledge conditions, the numbers of farmers achieve this are not so high. Currently, there is a little documentation in Vietnamese concerning toilet design have been found in bookstores and libraries although this is a real need, special for rural areas. For this purpose, a rural toilet design manual was just written in the College of Technology (CoT), CanTho University (CTU). Many types and forms of rural latrine - toilets | TOILET DESIGN FOR RURAL AREAS Le Anh Tuan 1 1 Department of Environmental and Water Resources Engineering, College of Technology, CanTho University, Campus II, Street 3/2, CanTho City, Vietnam. * E-mail: latuan@ --- oOo --- ABSTRACT Rural water supply and sanitation is one of major programs for rural development applied not only in Vietnam but also in other developing countries. However, due to poor income and low knowledge conditions, the numbers of farmers achieve this are not so high. Currently, there is a little documentation in Vietnamese concerning toilet design have been found in bookstores and libraries although this is a real need, special for rural areas. For this purpose, a rural toilet design manual was just written in the College of Technology (CoT), CanTho University (CTU). Many types and forms of rural latrine - toilets have been illustrated. Otherwise, some ways for human excreta and urine disposal collection and treatment have been introduced also. Key words: rural, sanitation, toilet design 1. INTRODUCTION Currently, the rapid increasing of population and pollution problem is gone concurrent, special in where almost a large numbers of the low-income people are living on. This even is happening in almost the developing countries. Vietnam in general and the Mekong river delta (MD) in particular, there is very low ratio of population served by adequate sanitation, especially in rural, peri-urban and poor urban areas (Anh, 2002). Not many of poor households have own sanitation toilet (Table 1 and table 2), almost are using very simple septic tanks or overhung toilets in ponds or rivers (figure 1). Table 1: Percentage of rural households owning latrines 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 % households 20 # 30 32 34 37 (Source: . Can, 2003) Table 2: Percentage of people accessing water supply and owning latrines in regions (2001) Per cent (%) Regions Accessing Owning water supply latrines Mountain area in the North 39 23 Red river delta 50 47 The .
