An estimated 10 percent of the 13 million farmers in the Mekong delta area are now landless. In poorer regions, the proportion of landless peasants is as high as 35 percent. A report on the village of Que Minh in the central province of Quang Nam, one of the poorest in the country, paints a terrible picture. About 8,000 people in the village earn as little as 6 US cents per day making straw hats to sell at the local market. In remote villages and hamlets in the mountainous provinces in the north of Vietnam, where 30 ethnic minority groups live, the villagers are known as the starving poor because they lack basic daily needs of water and food.
Most villages lack basic medical care and education.
Medical workers and teachers working there are paid out of the commune budget, often with rice or other foods, because the government allows no money for salaries. Lack of adequate food and basic health services results in appalling health figures. In 1998, the figure remains at 41 percent. The infant mortality rate in 1950 was 180 per thousand births and in 1995 it remains at 54 per thousand births. In 1997 more than one quarter of the 626,000 child deaths were the result of malnutrition and vitamin deficiency.