Thai slum girl's life hangs in balance as funding dries up

Asian Economic News, Oct 23, 2000

BANGKOK, Oct. 16 Kyodo

A Japanese nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Thailand is seeking help for an ailing 18-year-old Thai girl as funding for the costly medical treatment she needs to stay alive is rapidly drying up.

Five years ago, Bangkok slum dweller Chintana Kongmun underwent extensive surgery, receiving a heart and lung transplant from a five-year-old girl who died in a car accident.

Although the risky surgery was successful in lengthening her life by at least several years, she needs constant medication to suppress her immune system so that her body does not reject her new heart and lung.

Chintana has lived in a Bangkok slum since birth.

Her family of four used to sew handkerchiefs for a living, but had to sell their only sewing machine to help pay for her treatment.

Today, her father works as a motorbike taxi driver while her mother is unemployed and her 15-year-old sister attends school. The family earns less than 200 baht ($4.65) per day.

After her surgery, Chintana received financial support from the Public Health Ministry, which paid for the surgery and well as for monthly medications.

But in the wake of the Asian financial crisis that hit Thailand in mid-1997, the support came to a halt in early 1998.

The Shanti Volunteer Association (SVA), a Japanese NGO active in Thailand for over two decades, has since been partially supporting the cost of Chintana's monthly treatments.

But SVA officials said its budget is being stretched to the limit as her medicines, which are mostly imported, cost about 20,000 baht a month.

''This year we have given her 120,000 baht in support, which is equal to the cost of providing an education to dozens of children,'' said Katsumasa Yagisawa, secretary general of SVA's Bangkok office.

Yagisawa said funding for Chintana is becoming scarce.

''We cannot help only one girl because there are also others suffering in the slums,'' he said.

According to SVA, there are 2,000 slums in Thailand with a total population of about two million. Bangkok itself accounts for 1,200 of the slums, populated by around 1.2 million people.

The dense populations live under the corrugated iron roofs, their ramshackle dwellings separated by tiny paths full of garbage, stale water and dog droppings. Drug peddlers and addicts are much in evidence.

''We will keep working to develop the situation. We cannot be discouraged,'' said SVA staff member Saypin Jongcit.

Chintana is also among those slum children having received an educational scholarship from SVA. With her good grades, she has gone on to study in a technical college, where she is majoring in household economics.

''My dream was to be a nurse, but my doctors wouldn't allow me, saying I am too susceptible to infection. So now I think I want to work in the hotel business,'' she said.

Chintana said she regrets being a burden on her supporters, without whose kindness she would have died years ago. ''I feel very appreciative to my family and all the supporters. I feel that they are part of my life and I certainly owe them,'' she said.