Health4Us
Together for better health
Medical resources problems
The research from ministry of healthcare shows there are a lot of patients who demand for doctors, nurses and patient beds. Despite healthcare improvement in rural area such as North Eastern of Thailand, medical resources are still in need.
Moreover, the comparison between medical professional in Bangkok and North-Eastern part of Thailand shows the inequality of healthcare resources. Thus, medical services in rural areas is not as convinient as in Bangkok which resulted in longer time for such treatment.
The lack of medical resources is also resulted in lower quality of medical service. The reason is the overload cases per medical staff. Therefore, the incremental in medical resources per patient would impact the healthcare accessibility directly.
The demographic issue
The quality of life has improved significantly in Thailand over past decades. As a result, the fertility rate has been shrinking from 6.15 birth per woman in 1960 to around 1.4 in 2013, which is below the level needed to replace the populations (2.1). In addition, during the same period, life expectancy has risen from 55.2 years to 74.4. These figures are explained by contraception prevalence and improvement in health, especially of women and infants, which are signs of a society that is getting more and more developed.
Source: The World Bank
These evolution is not without consequences. The Thai population is aging which ultimately leads to change the demographic landscape of Thailand. The graph bellow shows a prediction of the Thai population pyramid over the next 30 years. Indeed, nowadays, people of 60 years old and over represent almost 16% of total Thai population. This category is expected to represent almost 36% of the Thai population by 2045.
Older people are more demanding in terms of healthcare services. As a result, the Thai aging population increases the demand in terms of health care services, whereas as seen in the Political Factor, the healthcare market is undersupplied in terms of infrastructure and human resources. This is a major issue since a higher demand combined with a lower supply may reinforce several barriers that limit access to healthcare services. For instance, if the active population decreases, this might badly impact the problem of health human resource scarcity.
Furthermore, in the Thai society, children represent a source of income for the elderly. Therefore, if the proportion of older people is rising while their main source of revenue is shrinking, we can fear a dramatic problem in the coming years, which may also impact the access of healthcare services to elders.
It is possible to turn this issue into an opportunity by employing experienced people (people over 60 years old) and developing the sector of healthy living style to keep people as healthy as possible throughout their life to prevent them to need primary health care services.
Social Pressure
While talking with doctors and with some of our friends and relatives, we have discovered that many young Thai people chose medical studies for prestige or because they are pushed by their family to do so. But at the end of their studies they decide to embrace a different career because they are not passionate, not talented enough to pursue in this field, or because they have to work for their family business. As a result, many people who are trained to be part of the health care human resource end up in other industries. Therefore, it represents a barrier for increasing the healthcare human resource and thus, to ease the access to medical services.
To explain this phenomenon, we can use the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Indeed, the social pressure is an environmental factor tightly linked to esteem need, which is the fourth step of Masow's Pyramid. In addition, several students can perceive medical studies as a challenge that leads them to self-actualization. If studies are usually designed to be a mean for embracing a specific career, several people consider studies and obtaining a difficult degree as being the end.
Interesting Matric
Time usage to the location for the right medical treatment
This metric measures the transportation difficulty to access the healthcare services. The time usage should be measured from travelling from the starting point to the right location for medical treatment such as place has different advancement in medical equipment. For example, the normal sickness could be cured in any hospital but the surgery will required the patients to go to the main hospital or to be transferred there.
The time taken to wait for the public transportation or waiting for someone to take to the location should be taken into consideration as well.