Urgent measures needed to combat Thailand’s NCD crisis: Somsak
Public health minister to seek urgent measures to tackle soaring number of patients with non-communicable diseases and rising costs
The public health minister is planning to push for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to be added to the national agenda because treating these diseases is costing the government up to 150 billion annually.
Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsutin said on Monday that the Cabinet will be asked to consider measures that promote healthy lifestyles, so the number of patients with NCDs does not increase, or at least there are fewer new patients.
“Now, about 150 billion baht is being spent each year on treating NCD patients. In 20 to 30 years, all these NCD patients will die,” he said.
Somsak added that the Cabinet needs to discuss this issue because the surge in NCD patients has become a crisis for Thailand as there are more patients each year.
He said the Public Health Ministry expects there to be 6.5 million people with diabetes, 14 million with hypertension, 1 million kidney patients, 140,000 new cancer patients and 10 million with mental problems this year.
Somsak said research by the ministry and the World Health Organisation in 2019 found that about 400,000 Thais died of NCDs each year. These losses cause up to 1.6 trillion baht in economic damage, including treatment costs of 139 billion baht per year.
Somsak said NCDs were a heavy financial burden on the Public Health Ministry. Of the 127.65 billion baht allocated to the National Health Security Office (NHSO) in 2017, 62.14 billion baht was spent on the treatment of NCDs, he said.
He added that according to the Disease Control Department, 1.06 million patients succumbed to kidney failure in 2023, up by 85,064 patients compared to the previous year.
The department reported that the NHSO’s costs for treating kidney patients have been rising by 946 million baht per year since 2021.
