Departure of MSF 'will hit hospitals'

An international medical aid group's decision to quit Thailand will increase the burden on the nation's health system, a Thai border physician says.

Sangkhla Buri District Health chief Supakorn Suprasit said the plan by Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) to close down two medical centres for unregistered migrants in Thailand will lead to an unwieldy burden that the country must shoulder.

MSF, one of the world's most respected medical and humanitarian aid groups, said on Monday it planned to close down the centres at the Three Pagodas Pass in Kanchanaburi's Sangkhla Buri district and Samut Sakhon province after 36 years because of "government interference". It did not say when that would happen.

Dr Supakorn said thousands of stateless migrants and ethnic minority people would be forced to try to get treatment under the Thai health system and this could affect health staff and hospitals that were already overloaded with work.

Dr Supakorn said MSF had sent a letter to the Kanchanaburi provincial health office and the Sangkhla Buri Health District to inform them of the planned closures.

He said with the MSF clinic at Three Pagodas Pass closed, healthcare services would struggle to provide polio, measles, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza meningitis vaccines under the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) for children and prenatal visits once a month.

Health staff from neighbouring districts such as Thong Pha Phum might be temporarily rotated to help reduce the workload at border hospitals and community clinics, he said.

Kanchanaburi provincial public health chief Paisan Dankum said he was optimistic border hospitals and community clinics would manage without the MSF clinic.

Dr Paisan said the financial situation of border hospitals was much better after the government last year approved 472 million baht to provide stateless people with healthcare.

MSF has been working in Thailand since 1975 when it set up the two clinics.

About 500,000 stateless people live in Thailand _ about 22,000 of them in Sangkhla Buri district. They have no healthcare coverage and depend on international health assistance.

reference  http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/health/259735/departure-of-msf-will-hit-hospitals