Antenatal healthcare on the Thai-Myanmar border

I am reading medicine, and last summer I had a rare opportunity to carry out a research project in Thailand when the country suddenly dropped COVID-19 travel restrictions. Supported by Emmanuel’s Pozzi Fund, I hastily arranged my flights to Bangkok and was lucky enough to work with the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) in Mae Sot on the border with Myanmar.

Working in clinics and remote sites under the supervision of Dr Rose McGready, a Cambridge friend and I investigated the role of multimedia in antenatal healthcare. This was especially important in Mae Sot, where there was a very large Karen migrant population that had fled repression and violence in Myanmar.

We wanted to determine whether showing a video outlining the nature of and reason for medical procedures a pregnant woman undergoes on her first antenatal visit would enable counsellors’ time to be spent more effectively, focusing on patients’ questions and decisions that need to be made. In this environment, where weather and other conditions require electronic equipment to be replaced regularly, it is important to know whether video education could be helpful before seeking larger-scale investment to deliver a programme more generally.

We gained ethical approval for our trial from the Tak Province Border Community Ethics Advisory Board. They also gave valuable advice about how to tailor our study to benefit further the Thai-Burmese migrant communities we were investigating. After my friend and I returned to the UK, a local co-investigator continued to work alongside the interpreters and complete the data collection. We are still processing the data, and hope to publish our results later this year. This was an unmissable and eye-opening experience. My perceptions of what a medical career can entail have been broadened beyond anything I could have imagined in the UK, and I hope I will be able to return in the future to continue working there.