Public Health Help for Seniors and Disabled
In Phrao, the disabled and elderly cannot get to public health programs or services. They have Warm Heart’s Project Access.
Project Access serves those most in need, those without family, friends or funds, those with overwhelming care needs who cannot care for themselves.
Warm Heart’s Public Health program, Project Access, provides the people of Phrao with support and resources critical to their health and well-being.
Project Access provides everything necessary to keep life enjoyable and worth living for the isolated disabled and elderly – car rides to the hospital, art therapy sessions, bedside gardens, clean sheets, music, conversation and much more.
Many in Phrao, especially the growing population of the disabled and elderly, live in sub-standard conditions due to poverty and their location in rural Northern Thailand.
Warm Heart, in many cases, is the primary link between community members and the government health services that lack the resources to serve a widely dispersed population.
Volunteers survey the community to find members in need and come up with the best way to help them.
Meet Kangao
This is Kangao, age 86. She is blind and hard of hearing, but that doesn’t keep her from laughing and smiling.
She receives a monthly pension of $25.00 from the government, but this doesn’t begin to cover her expenses.
We visit her weekly to clean her home, cook her nutritious meals, take her to the hospital and, most important, make her laugh a lot!
Kangao is just one of many that our visiting teams led by Noina, a professional nurse’s assistant, visit on a regular basis, bringing smiles and laughter, brooms, mops and cooking pots.
Each morning Soida gathers her team of volunteers and packs our old Suzuki with healthy snacks, cleaning supplies, games and newspapers. Off they go bouncing and splashing along muddy country roads to make their rounds.
They give the frail a gentle bath and get them into the sun.
They take folks to the market to schmooze or to the clinic for an appointment.
Soida and her team make upward towards 1,100 visits annually. They are the lifeline for three dozen shut-ins’, their safety net. Their visits are the one joyous hour in otherwise drab and lonely weeks.
And when there’s an emergency at 3:00 AM, the Warm Heart truck is there for a trip to the hospital.
Help keep this program thriving
