Children, The Family and Health: What it Takes to Give Children Long Life
The Singapore Workshop: An Observation Of A Bangkok Community Worker On Thai Disadvantaged Children In Bangkok
This paper outlines my observation as a community worker on the health of children under the age of 10 who are living in the densely populated areas in Bangkok.
During the past decades, there have been many significant changes in the Thai society in several aspects and such changes have affected the Thai way of life, such as family union and standard of living. Especially during the last 10 years, Thai society has changed from expanded family to a nucleus type. Since there seem to be more opportunities in big cities such as Bangkok, there has been a massive transmigration of rural people to the cities. These phenomena were even more exaggerated by factors such as the property booms which required hundreds of thousand of people to work on building sites.
These changes leads to occurrence of hundreds of densely populated areas in Bangkok and other main urban centers in Thailand.
I am a community worker, who has been working with these unfortunate children in slum area of Bangkok for a period of time. I noticed that during the past 10 years, these children’s physical health have improved due to better nutrition. As government and Bangkok Metropolitan Authority put their budget together to support “Free Lunch” project and also free milk for all children who go to BMA schools and BMA children care home. Hence, malnutrition is no longer a major problem for these unfortunate children any more.
Moreover, due to adverse surrounding, many of these young children are still suffering from infection diseases especially diarrhea, respiratory tract problems and asthma.
To be able to understand why the above diseases are still major health problems, one needs to know what kind of environment they live in.
These children live in make shift houses built on swamp area, where toilet discharge directly into the water because there is no waste water system, so they breath the air that is far from being fresh. In many slums, there are no room for children playgrounds. The only public area is the walkway made from rotten concrete and some are rotten wooden planks connecting the houses which may be only a meter-wide. These children lounge around on these platforms when they’re not at school Somehow they manage to run around on these narrow path without getting grounded in sewage water.
Actions that have been taken By Central government & Local government
Government has been setting up Industrial program estate to encourage business to move out of Bangkok by using Tax incentives.
There is a program call “Isarn Keow” which has been trying to develop fertility in North Eastern part of Thailand (Most of Labor in cities comes from that area). The program supports all the agricultural progress and development.
Four years ago, there was a remarkable project that has been raised by the BMA. That project was about building four-story and fireproof building and will be simply called a “developed community”. Within the same area, there will be able to accommodate the same number of families and there will be green area left as a pocket park for those people’s own use as well as other people who live nearby. This project is not only the wise way of using the space but also the way to solve the sanitary & hygienic problems too. It has been estimated that there are about 200,000 families in the 1200 slums in Bangkok. One unit of such building should cast about 300,000 Baht, so 60,000,000,000 Baht, would be divided into 10 years project. Each year the budget of 6000 million will be needed. With the government sharing the expenses with BMA, on the 60/40 basis, this is the same as other infrastructure projects in the city. The BMA will need a budget of 2400 million Baht which normally they have an annual budget of approx. 30,000 million. This amount will be 7.3 % of the BMA budget, which is possible without any repression on the other services that the BMA has to render. And if this plan is pursued we will have Bangkok, our capital city, without slums and plus 1200 pocket parks all over the city to supplement dozens of big parks that we have.
All the above projects are time consuming. As a community worker, I realize that it is very important to help solving these problems as quickly as possible. Therefore, what we do are
- We go into these areas and give right information, teaching them about how to keep them in good health by eating the nutritional and hygienic food. We also give the importance of giving instructions and training the community volunteer so that they can help others by their knowledge, and they will be the best trainers or instructors because they live with the problems themselves and they know those problems very well.
- We also try to find more help from the private sectors of foundations especially in financial cooperation, in order to support us in our attempt to decrease the problems in undeveloped community areas.
- Besides, we have been bringing the mobile clinic to the community every week in order to make sure everybody can get a weekly or monthly checkup. If there is an emergency or some major injuries, there will be a community clinic nearby to serve the purpose.
- Last but not least, since more than 90% of the population in Thailand are Buddhists, and temples and monks have always been our center of fate and belief. Since we know this bond and relationship between Buddhism and Thai, 30% of small child care homes have been built in the last four years because of the help from the temples and monks. Isn’t it amazing how the Buddhism affects our way of life and belief? These child care homes wouldn’t have happened this fast if we did not get good cooperation from the monks and temples. Some people sacrificed a little piece of their land in order to build child care home. And they believe it is a merit sharing, like when they give their money as a donation to the temple.
It is certainly a duty of the authorized person to put into implemented. These children also have right to breathe fresh air, to live away from fear of devastating slum fire, and most important, to have a chance to grow up normally and become a healthy and productive citizen of our country.
Last Modified: November 29, 2002