Laddawan Panya. Disparities in health and health care between Thai and hill tribe people at Poppra district, Tak province. Master's Degree(Medical and Health Social Sciences). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2009-07-09.
Disparities in health and health care between Thai and hill tribe people at Poppra district, Tak province
Abstract:
Health is the fundamental right of all people without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political, and socioeconomic status. The hill tribe people who are ethnic minority also have the right to receive the same health service as the majority of Thai people. Therefore, this study has the objective to investigate the equity in health and health care concerning accessibility, utilization
and quality of health services among Thai and hill tribe people. The data was collected in Poppra district, Tak province using questionnaire survey. A total of 290 Thai and 260 hill tribe people. The results about the self-assessed health status of both groups Thai and hill tribe
people revealed that they considered their own health status as being fair, being ill 1-3 times in the past year. Thai people have more chronic disease and body mass index than hill tribe people. This might be due to different life style and opportunities to access health services of Thai and tribal people, and the age of Thai respondents are older than tribal respondents. Differences in health care due to hill tribe people facing more obstacles to access health services than Thai people the obstacles included geographic, financial and cultural factors. There is no difference in the number of visiting health facility between two groups of respondents, but there is a significant difference in selection
of health facility for their health services. Thai people prefer to go to district hospital of other district or private clinic/hospital because Thai people have higher socioeconomic status while hill tribe people are poor or have lower socio-economic status. It is inequity in health which is based on different socio-economic status of populations under study. There is significant difference in quality of health services between two groups of respondents. Hill respondents need interpreter due to communication problems with physicians and health personnel. They have problems with the health advice written in Thai, and they do not understand and can not read the prescription of medicine. There is also a significant difference in the matter of health insurance. 16.5% of tribal respondents are not covered by any health insurance system because they have not obtained Thai citizenship. However, hill tribe respondents have more satisfaction towards health services after the implementation of universal health coverage scheme than Thai respondents.