Date:
1972-1976
Source:
Office of the Prime
Minister, National Economic and Social Development Board, Bangkok, Thailand
Subject:
health services, mother
and child care, family planning programmes, communicable diseases, medical care,
environmental health, mental health
Text:
Guidelines
in Public Health Development
1.
Mother and Child Care and Family Planning Programme
(a) Prenatal, natual and
postnatal care, as well as disease prevention and health education programmes
for infants, pre-school and school children.
(b) Family planning programmes,
particularly aimed at low income groups to help them determine the number and
spacing of their children. By the end of this Plan period (1972-1976) these
programmes should have helped to lower the birth rate by about 0.5 per cent.
(c) Nutrition Programmes:
-
Encourage the consumption and production of low cost,
high protein foods.
-
Improve nutrition, especially of pre-school
children in rural areas, by establishing nutrition centres.
-
Improve nutrition of school children through
cooperation with concerned official institutions in setting up nutrition
projects in schools.
-
Control of various categories of malnutrition,
including the relief or elimination of simple goitre.
2. Control and Eradication of Communicable Diseases
(a) Eradication of some communicable diseases which can be
controlled by specific and effective measures. Prevention programmes can also
reduce the mortality rate and keep under better control other communicable
diseases for which there are as yet no really effective cures or prevention.
(b) Undertake epidemiological activities and improve the
effectiveness of medical and public health laboratories.
3. Improvement and Expansion of Medical Care
(a) Encourage the improvement of medical services, especially
in rural areas. Increasing the number of various categories of personnel,
medical equipment, and drugs will result in more and better services to
outpatients.
(b) Find ways to convince people of the value of good medical
care (medical workers in rural areas--establishment of regional hospitals in
every region and in major or densely populated provinces--specialists in all
fields in the hospitals.)
(c) Improve facilities by increasing the number of hospital
beds during the Plan, as follows:
- General hospitals in central area--increase by 850 beds.
- General hospitals in local areas--increase by 5,000 beds.
- Hospitals under municipal control--increase by 550 beds.
- Health centres--increase by 800 beds.
- Other institutions--increase by approximately 1,800 beds.
(d) Increase number of physicians, nurses, and practical
nurses, by 1,850, 7,595 and 5,200 respectively.
4. Development of Environmental Health
Improvement of the environmental conditions which may be
detrimental to the people’s health, particularly food, water, air, including
prevention of pollution from chemicals and radioactivity, as follows:
(a) Study and plan for programmes to eliminate toxic
substances detrimental to the health of the people, in collaboration with the
agencies concerned.
(b) Keep the people informed about the damaging and dangerous
effects of toxic substances, so that they can participate in solving common
problems.
(c) Improve medical and research work.
(d) Strengthen laws and regulations, and expand enforcement
by public health personnel.
5. Integrated Health Services
(a) Coordinate all public health activities such as health
promotion, disease prevention programmes, and medical care, through the
expansion of services in health and midwife centres so as to enable them to
reach more people (50,000 persons for each first class health centre, 5,000
persons for each second class health centre, and 2,000 persons for each midwife
centre).
(b) Encourage the integration of various specialized
campaigns, such as the Malaria Eradication Project, the School Health Project,
the Leprosy Control Project, the Family Planning Project etc., within the
general health services.
(c) Take steps towards more effective coordination among
institutions providing medical care and disease prevention.
6. Solving of Personnel Shortage Problem
(a) Support and encourage training of more qualified
personnel in all categories. Consideration should be given to the creation of
new categories of personnel, such as health administrators, technicians
somewhere between physician and nurse, etc. in order to remedy the lack of
qualified technical staff.
(b) Transfer to rural areas, where there is an acute
shortage, of qualified technicians, some of the manpower at present concentrated
in the metropolitan areas. To encourage this living conditions and security will
have to be improved, and incentives provided such as further training, better
promotion prospects, etc.
(c) Persuade private medical practitioners to cooperate with
the Ministry of Public Health in the development of public health activities.
7. Psychological and Mental Health
(a) Provide mobile units to offer psychological services to
the people in rural areas.
(b) Organize psychological units in all regional general
hospitals.
(c) Establish psychological centres in every region.
(d) Increase the number of beds in mental hospitals
throughout the country, to a total of 2,000 beds.
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