A Co Tu woman undergoes a health check at a clinic in Tay Giang District. Local officials say due to poor heath care facilities, they cannot save many who attempt suicide by eating la ngon, a toxic plant abundant in the district.

Authorities are at a loss for what to do about a poisonous leaf that locals are using to kill themselves.

Tay Giang District’s Seventh Border Area, near Laos, had been made virtually inaccessible by flooded roads.

Tai was undergoing a long and difficult birth and her house was soon to be washed away.

Her family carried her on a stretcher over muddy river banks, even wading through water at certain points, to get to the district hospital.

However, the baby died during the birth.

“Later, Tai committed suicide by eating la ngon (Gelsemium elegans),” said Dr. Ploong Loi.

Tai has not been the only one in the area to commit suicide using la ngon, one of the most toxic plants in Vietnam and China.

Loi, who works for Tr’Hy Commune Health Station, said five local people purposely ate the plant leaf last year. Two of them survived.

Zoram Xuoc, a local man, killed himself by consuming la ngon last year, leaving his wife and child behind. He was 25 years old then.

In all, four out of five people who attempted suicide with the plant died in Ch’Um Commune in 2007.

Nguyen Huy Thong, head of Tay Giang District Health Department, said the number of la ngon-related suicide attempts has been increasing sharply since 2005. He said most cases were between 14 and 26 years old.

Last year, 10 people died district-wide after eating the deadly leaf, Thong said.

“We’re powerless against la ngon unless we catch the person immediately after they ingest it.”

Death all around

The Seventh Border Area’s four main communes – Tr’Hy, A Xan, Ch’Um and Ga Ry – are mainly inhabited by the Co Tu ethnic minority people.

The toxic plant grows in all of the border area’s forests but is most abundant in Tr’hy.

“La ngon is more plentiful than rice and corn,” Voong Hamlet patriarch Clau Blao said. “We Co Tu people have long tried to kill it and kept away from it, but it has killed many in our hamlet.”

Bhling Mia, vice chairman of Tay Giang District People’s Committee, said local children are taught to distinguish the highly toxic plant from others from a very early age.

“We are very afraid of la ngon,” Mia said, adding that eating just one leaf can be fatal.

Deputy Party Secretary of Tr’Hy Commune, Ploong Thai, said authorities were very worried about the rising suicide rates.

Local agencies are working out plans to exterminate all la ngon in the area, he said, adding that the locality had asked for funds from Tay Giang District leaders to reward locals who help destroy the plants.

Each person who collects a kilogram of la ngon roots should be granted VND20,000 (US$1.16), Thai said.

But it’s not that easy.

“The plant is profuse in all our forests. It’ll be impossible to kill all of it, even with billions of dong in funding,” Thai said. “Meanwhile, the commune is just too poor.”

More than 60 percent of local families live under the poverty line.

Source: NLD