Thailand’s universal health insurance system will expand in 2024 to offer coverage to stateless people and other non-Thais. The Kingdom’s public health system has been praised by the United Nations as a model for developing countries.

The expansion of the health insurance system will provide a lifeline to roughly half a million tribal and ethnic people in the Kingdom who are stateless. Some of them struggle for access to services that are available to Thai citizens, including health care and education.

The United Nations has also commended the Kingdom’s programs to end statelessness within its borders, citing several successes on the part of Thai governments but urging that more can be done. Thailand’s remote, mountainous and forested border areas have been home for centuries to tribes that roam between countries in traditional migratory patterns.

Their movements and distance from developed areas have left even those born in the Kingdom stateless because their births were not registered with the authorities. Each year, however, Thailand has been granting citizenship to tens of thousands of them.

Dr Surachoke Tangwiwat, Acting Deputy Permanent Secretary for Public Health, said the ministry has a policy of expanding and improving public health services in remote and border areas, especially for non-Thais and those without citizenship.

The new approach will allow non-Thais who do not hold identification documents to register for treatment and coverage.

Thailand introduced its universal health insurance system in the early 2000s, and it has proven to be extremely popular with the public. Successive governments have worked to close any loopholes in the system that leave anyone without access to health care.

Photo courtesy of https://www.nhso.go.th/