Pattaya Deputy Mayor Verawat Khakhay and the city’s medical-outreach team came to the rescue of an 80-year-old woman and her son, who quit his job to care for his mother, but ended up giving her the wrong medicine.
Verawat and Medical Welfare Team chief, Sub Lt. Sumitra Ngamyanglai brought medical care to the Soi Wat Tham neighborhood home of Buoy Kritthawin June 9. Abandoned by all but one of her four children, Buoy was in increasingly poor health, cared for daily by her 46-year-old son Chairat who, unfortunately, never contacted authorities for help and had no experience in treating medical conditions.
(L to R) Buoy Kritthawin, and her son Chairat accept help from Deputy Mayor Verawat Khakhay and the mobile medical team.
As part of Pattaya’s initiative to add a virtual 20,000 beds to the city’s medical system through house calls, doctors tested Buoy and found she was not only paralyzed, but suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure.
The experts disposed of all the wrong medications Chairat had been giving her, set her on a proper course of treatment and arranged for the Village Health Volunteers organization to check on her periodically. The deputy mayor also made available city ambulance services should she need more urgent care.
Verawat said Chairat’s heart was certainly in the right place and the family’s plight highlighted the fact many Pattaya residents not only lack proper health care, but are unaware there are city and charity resources available to them.
Chairat said he was a simple day laborer who had quit his job a year ago to take care of Buoy after she fell ill. They now had little money and their house lacked any electricity. While Buoy has other children, Chairat said they never answered his pleas for financial assistance, leaving him – he thought – no choice but to beg neighbors for money to pay for adult diapers, food and other necessities.
While he was able to lend medical aid, Verawat didn’t offer any solution to the family’s poverty, but did fork out 1,000 baht from his own pocket to help Chairat pay for diapers for his mother.
