|
For over 60 years the World Health Organization (WHO)
has contributed significantly to Thailand’s national health development and
capacity building particularly in the areas of communicable disease control,
eradication of smallpox, primary health care, development of human resources
for health, maternal and child health, and basic health services.
WHO was instrumental in
strengthening the planning capacity of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH)
in formulating Thailand's
national health development plans during the decades of the 1970s and
1980s. Also during this period the
Organization supported innovative activities in primary health care and
contributed toward building institutional capacity in tropical diseases and
human reproduction research and training. WHO is also credited for having
supported for over four decades the development of Thailand's successful programmes
in EPI, essential drugs and malaria control.
In recent years, WHO has made a
broad range of contributions, among them helping to plan and implement the
control of HIV/AIDS, the DOTS TB strategy, strengthen and support the Field
Epidemiology Training Programme (FETP) and the Asian Collaborative Training
Network for Malaria (ACT Malaria), the Healthy Cities programme, health
systems reform, health promotion, and research funding for the development of
a dengue vaccine.
The WHO programme devotes a
considerable amount of its resources to agencies outside the Ministry of
Public Health. Examples include
creating awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS and continuum of care for
people living with HIV/AIDS and access to basic health services through the
Social Security Scheme, promoting the healthy cities approach to
community-based organizations, and supporting technical cooperation among
countries. NonGovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been very effective in
tobacco control activities in Thailand and have been strong supporters of WHO’s
tobacco free initiative. The current
health system reform movement in Thailand envisions strong civil
society actors as building blocks of a national healthy society.
|
