Global Conference Tackles Health Issues

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization and Thailand’s prime minister urged unconventional, preemptive steps in areas from smoking to nutrition to battle human illness as they launched a global health conference in Bangkok.

WHO Director General Lee Jong-wook held up the example of the US state of California’s tobacco control program, saying it had helped reduce lung cancer by 14 percent over ten years — while the rest of the country saw only a three percent decline.

“There are never enough human and financial resources for health promotion, but there are always new approaches and methods to increase our options,” Lee said Sunday at the opening of the Sixth Global Conference on Health Promotion.

He said several countries have set up unconventional health strategies since the first such forum in Ottawa, Canada, in 1986.

Developing countries are among them. Thailand, which is co-sponsoring the conference with WHO, has worked to change its approach from “repairing” health to “building health’’ by offering cheap, universal health care nationwide, said Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thailand in 2001 started the “30 baht” insurance plan, under which patients who are not covered by other health plans pay 30 baht — about 75 US cents (0.61 euro cents) — each time they visit a doctor. The program now covers about 47 million of Thailand’s 65 million people.

“That means that millions of Thais who would never dare go to the hospital are now able to benefit from essential medical treatment,’’ Thaksin said. “We would much prefer for our people to see the doctor regularly rather than to wait for major illness.’’

The success of Thailand’s decade-old nationwide campaign to help staunch the spread of AIDS has become a model for other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which has the second-highest number of people living with the AIDS-causing virus HIV after sub-Saharan Africa.

Delegates at this year’s weeklong Bangkok health conference are expected to launch a new charter, building on parts of the one from the first conference. The new plan is expected to calls for gender equality in health promotion, along with more participation by both policy makers and the public.