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Global health
Roles of subdistrict health office personnel and village health volunteers in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic
  1. Tares Krassanairawiwong1,
  2. Chartchay Suvannit1,
  3. Krit Pongpirul2,3 and
  4. Kriang Tungsanga4
  1. 1Department of Health Service Support, Royal Thai Government Ministry of Public Health, Nonthaburi, Thailand
  2. 2Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Medicine, Bangkok, Thailand
  3. 3Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  4. 4Department of Internal Medicine, Chulalongkorn University Faculty of Medicine, Bangkok, Thailand
  1. Correspondence to Dr Krit Pongpirul; doctorkrit{at}gmail.com

Abstract

In Thailand, 40 000 subdistrict health centre (SDHC) personnel and >1 million village health volunteers (VHVs) are responsible for primary healthcare of 23 million households in 75 032 villages. They were trained, made household visits, gave hygiene advice, participated in the ‘Big Cleaning Day’ campaign, produced cloth face masks, proactively identified high-risk visitors and monitored quarantined cases. 7.4 million Thais received basic education on hygiene, 1.3 million villagers joined the campaign and 3.6 million handmade cloth face masks were produced. In March 2020, 3.9 million households were visited, and 40 000 high-risk cases were detected. The intensity of proactive case findings increased to 12.6 million home visits and 834 000 cases were detected in April 2020. Almost 800 000 cases complied with the 14-day mandatory home quarantine, of which 3.6% developed symptoms suspected of respiratory tract infection. VHVs and SDHC personnel could efficiently contribute to the prevention and control of COVID-19 in Thailand.

  • COVID-19
  • public health
  • global health

This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.

https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2021-244765

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors TK and CS conceived of the idea, collected the data. KT and KP drafted the manuscript and analysed the data. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.