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Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has been a major human threat for a year. A large number of people have been infected and killed globally, including hill tribe people living in remote and border areas between Thailand and Myanmar. Different expectations of and experiences with the implemented disease preventio...

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Autores principales: Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak, Udplong, Anusorn, Apidechkul, Tawatchai, Tamornpark, Ratipark, Mulikaburt, Thanatchaporn, Srichan, Peeradone, Suratana, Soontaree, Yeemard, Fatima, Wongnuch, Pilasinee
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8176874/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11145-5
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author Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak
Udplong, Anusorn
Apidechkul, Tawatchai
Tamornpark, Ratipark
Mulikaburt, Thanatchaporn
Srichan, Peeradone
Suratana, Soontaree
Yeemard, Fatima
Wongnuch, Pilasinee
author_facet Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak
Udplong, Anusorn
Apidechkul, Tawatchai
Tamornpark, Ratipark
Mulikaburt, Thanatchaporn
Srichan, Peeradone
Suratana, Soontaree
Yeemard, Fatima
Wongnuch, Pilasinee
author_sort Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has been a major human threat for a year. A large number of people have been infected and killed globally, including hill tribe people living in remote and border areas between Thailand and Myanmar. Different expectations of and experiences with the implemented disease prevention and control measures by local, national and international organizations have been widely reported. This study aimed to understand the experiences and expectations regarding the disease prevention and control measures that were implemented among hill tribe people in Thailand. METHODS: Qualitative data were collected from participants aged 20 and older who belonged to the hill tribes living on the border of northern Thailand and Myanmar. A semistructured questionnaire was used to guide interviews. Information was extracted for thematic analysis by the NVivo program. RESULTS: Fifty-seven participants (36 female, 21 male) were interviewed; 27 participants were Thai Yai, 14 participants were Yunnan Chinese, 8 participants were Akha, and 8 participants were from other tribes. The average age was 45.8 years (min = 20 years, max = 90 years). Thirty participants had never attended school, and the other 27 participants had received education at different levels, from primary school to higher education. Forty participants were unemployed, 13 worked as agriculturists, and the other 4 were attending school. Both positive experiences, such as improving personal hygiene practices, maintaining close contact and increasing relationships among family members and demonstrating the leadership of the villager leaders, and negative experiences, including interruption of social interactions, family financial problems, poor access to medical care services, and invisible people to the government, were found. Different expectations were observed regarding organizations at the local, national, and international levels. Expectations at the local level included villagers and community leaders taking action to strongly contribute to prevention and control measures and to prevent unscreened people from entering the village. Obtaining accurate information about the disease and being financially supported were expectations at the national level, while closing borders to protect cases from overflowing into their villages was an international-level expectation. CONCLUSION: Although hill tribes reside in very remote rural areas, they experience both positive and negative effects of the disease prevention and control measures implemented by organizations. Their expectations are formally and informally voiced to policy makers at the local, national and international levels. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11145-5.
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spelling pubmed-81768742021-06-04 Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak Udplong, Anusorn Apidechkul, Tawatchai Tamornpark, Ratipark Mulikaburt, Thanatchaporn Srichan, Peeradone Suratana, Soontaree Yeemard, Fatima Wongnuch, Pilasinee BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has been a major human threat for a year. A large number of people have been infected and killed globally, including hill tribe people living in remote and border areas between Thailand and Myanmar. Different expectations of and experiences with the implemented disease prevention and control measures by local, national and international organizations have been widely reported. This study aimed to understand the experiences and expectations regarding the disease prevention and control measures that were implemented among hill tribe people in Thailand. METHODS: Qualitative data were collected from participants aged 20 and older who belonged to the hill tribes living on the border of northern Thailand and Myanmar. A semistructured questionnaire was used to guide interviews. Information was extracted for thematic analysis by the NVivo program. RESULTS: Fifty-seven participants (36 female, 21 male) were interviewed; 27 participants were Thai Yai, 14 participants were Yunnan Chinese, 8 participants were Akha, and 8 participants were from other tribes. The average age was 45.8 years (min = 20 years, max = 90 years). Thirty participants had never attended school, and the other 27 participants had received education at different levels, from primary school to higher education. Forty participants were unemployed, 13 worked as agriculturists, and the other 4 were attending school. Both positive experiences, such as improving personal hygiene practices, maintaining close contact and increasing relationships among family members and demonstrating the leadership of the villager leaders, and negative experiences, including interruption of social interactions, family financial problems, poor access to medical care services, and invisible people to the government, were found. Different expectations were observed regarding organizations at the local, national, and international levels. Expectations at the local level included villagers and community leaders taking action to strongly contribute to prevention and control measures and to prevent unscreened people from entering the village. Obtaining accurate information about the disease and being financially supported were expectations at the national level, while closing borders to protect cases from overflowing into their villages was an international-level expectation. CONCLUSION: Although hill tribes reside in very remote rural areas, they experience both positive and negative effects of the disease prevention and control measures implemented by organizations. Their expectations are formally and informally voiced to policy makers at the local, national and international levels. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11145-5. BioMed Central 2021-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8176874/ /pubmed/34088306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11145-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Kitchanapaibul, Siwarak
Udplong, Anusorn
Apidechkul, Tawatchai
Tamornpark, Ratipark
Mulikaburt, Thanatchaporn
Srichan, Peeradone
Suratana, Soontaree
Yeemard, Fatima
Wongnuch, Pilasinee
Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title_full Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title_fullStr Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title_full_unstemmed Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title_short Experiences and expectations regarding COVID-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern Thailand: a qualitative study
title_sort experiences and expectations regarding covid-19 prevention and control measures among the hill tribe population of northern thailand: a qualitative study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8176874/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11145-5
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