Health

A senior Thai Health Ministry official said that from May 2015, government health insurance packages are available to buy for every registered migrant worker and their dependents. Dr. Poonlarp Chantavichitwong, Chief of Tak Public Health Officer from Tak Public Health Office, told local reporters after a joint health conference held in Mae Sot with the Karen State Health Department of…

The Burma Children Medical Fund organized and took a team of health specialists from Mae Tao Clinic, located in the Thai border town of Mae Sot and from Lampang Hospital, northern Thailand to Hpa-an in eastern Burma. The health specialists were in Hpa-an to do echocardiogram screenings on children and adults with heart problems. Ms Thornton said that the echocardiogram…

Ethnic communities have spent decades building vital services in the absence of government help, but there are now fears interference could result in their work being undermined. While acknowledging Myanmar needs help, Cynthia Maung is not optimistic that a $100 million (about 3.2 billion baht) agreement with the World Bank for essential health services will benefit ethnic community health organisations…

A new report by a network of ethnic community health organisations was released today at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, Bangkok. The report, The Long Road to Recovery, based on data surveyed from 64 townships, with a target population of half a million people, “shows decreased rates of malaria and maternal malnutrition, and improved patterns of breastfeeding.” Despite these…

Dr Cynthia founder of the Mae Tao Clinic on the Thai Burma border that provides free health care to as many 140,000 refugees and migrant workers from Burma each year celebrated her 55th birthday on Saturday 6 December by planting the same number of trees and called on the international community to continue funding border projects. Dr Cynthia’s Mae Tao…

Mai Luh, 6, was getting a hard time from playmates who poked fun at him over his looks. Mai Luh, born with a cleft palate, had experience discrimination from birth because of his facial disfigurement. In Mae Sot Hospital on the Thai-Burma border, a medic from Mai Luh’s home village recounts the story of how Mai Luh’s father abandoned him…

After six-year-old That Pine had been ill for four days, That Thin took the boy to a clinic in Myawaddy just across the border from Mae Sot in Thailand’s Tak province. Father and son went there twice, paying a sizeable 60,000 kyat (about US$60) in fees, but the doctors claimed to be stumped. “His condition became worse. He did not…

Aung Naing was six years old when he moved to Nu Poe refugee camp in Thailand, leaving conflict-wracked Karen State, in Eastern Burma. Sitting down in the small compound on the outskirts of Chiang Mai that has been his home for the last 15 months, Aung Naing recalls those first years in the camp. “My mother and father had gone…

Student activist, Saw Thet Thun was arrested twice – in 1991 and 1999 – spending nearly 20 years in prison, he was released in 2007. Saw Thet Thun recalls some of the horrors he and fellow prisoners faced in those years. “The biggest hardship was being tortured. The prison authorities would treat us as less than human, like dogs. They…

Medics working with civilians displaced by fighting in Kachin State are struggling to cope because of a lack of resources – community based organizations warn of a potential health crisis. Information provided to Karen News by the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, allege that health workers are struggling to cope with the thousands of people displaced by conflict. “Every month we…