As of October 2021, Thailand continues to host some 91,411 refugees who fled from Myanmar. The refugees are being hosted in nine government-run temporary shelters on the Thailand–Myanmar border.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed refugees to a new threat, because adherence to social distancing is challenging in densely populated temporary shelters. To reduce and control the outbreak in the temporary shelters, the Thai government has ordered lockdown and curfew measures across all nine shelters since the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand in May 2021. Essential services and activities focusing on the prevention and control of the virus took priority as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown.
The International Rescue Committee of Thailand (IRC) is a sub-recipient of PR-UNOPS under the RAI3E programme funded by the Global Fund through the Thai Ministry of Public Health’s Department of Disease Control. IRC began implementation of the malaria project in April 2021.
IRC is working closely with other non-governmental organizations and local partners to strengthen COVID-19 surveillance, testing and case management capacities, while continuing to maintain malaria prevention, care and treatment services across all nine temporary shelters. To keep front-line healthcare workers physically and psychologically safe, the IRC trained healthcare workers to implement safety practices and equipped them with personal protective equipment (PPE), including face masks, gloves and gowns.
Despite the pandemic-related challenges in implementing malaria activities, IRC has successfully implemented most of the project’s activities, including specimen collection from 3,964 individual refugees for active case detection. The malaria project team also conducted awareness-raising on malaria prevention, signs and symptoms with the refugee community across the nine camps. A malaria post was set up in each of the nine camps together with a system to refer severe cases to local hospitals.
The project team strictly followed the standard treatment guideline under the technical support of Thailand’s Division of Vector Borne Diseases, Public Health Offices, and Vector Borne Disease Center, to ensure integrated, quality service delivery and promote the use of long-lasting insecticidal nets among the refugee community.
Through this project, IRC learned that malaria in the refugee camps can be significantly reduced with effective case management. IRC is confident that with support from the Global Fund, Thailand’s malaria strategy ‘Thailand is free from malaria by 2024’ will be met.
