St John volunteers visit Mae Tao Clinic

COUNTRY: Thailand
PROGRAM: UniBreak Groups
PROJECT: Community Healthcare
WRITTEN BY: St John's Ambulance Volunteers

What an amazing week it’s been! It’s so hard to believe we have only been in Thailand for just over a week! The last few weeks have been jam packed with eye-opening experiences and adventures. Here are a few things the international volunteers group have seen and participated in.
The volunteers were all very anxious about visiting Mae Tao Clinic. We will be visiting the clinic several times throughout the month, observing medics and helping out where possible.

The clinic was a lot bigger than the volunteering group thought it would be. It had different wards and departments such as mental health, maternal, surgical, acupuncture, and paediatrics. We had the opportunity to have a look and learn about prosthetics too. The patients are Burmese refugees and the clinic is mainly run by volunteers and NGOs. In Australia, we’re all used to beds, slide sheets, oxygen readily available by each bed etc. At Mae Sot Clinics, their beds are wooden tables which are less than a metre apart from each other. Such an eye opening experience! We are all very excited to start getting to know the clinic and system a bit more.

The volunteer groups have also visited three migrant communities approximately 45 kilometres south of Mae Sot. The living conditions here were very different to what you would ever see in Australia. The floor was a mixture of red rock and clay (the type of clay you would play with in art class). I cannot imagine what it would be like if it rained. The huts are made out of bamboo. They have been stuck into the ground with minimal tools.

We had the opportunity to provide and administer vitamin supplements and de-worming tablets to the children in each community. They were very happy to see that we had koala, kangaroo, and wombat stamps! They wanted us to stamp them everywhere – from their forehead to their toes! Dr Htin Zaw from Social Action of Women (SAW) provided a GP type consultation to the migrants who needed their health attended to. He saw approximately 30 migrants in an hour. That’s roughly 2 minutes each!!