Genetics and Public Health in Developing Countries Asia-Perspective
Medical Genetics in Thailand , or other developing countries, is a rather new discipline. At present there are small number of fully-trained medical geneticists in Thailand and only available as teaching faculties in medical schools. Therefore, inadequate medical genetic teaching, lack of genetic services available; make planning for prevention and control at the Primary Health Care levels extremely difficult. At present, there is yet no well-defined department in the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) which is responsible systematically in working on birth defects/genetic disorders. Only thalassemias had received reasonable attention and support from the government in the past 10 years or so. Establishment of a national committee on control and prevention of birth defects/genetic disorders to tackle this urgent problem as a priority health care is necessary. Public health approach for the control of common genetic and congenital disorders in primary care, review evidence-based interventions for adequate control of congenital and genetic disorders and ways to integrate public health approaches and interventions into health care systems will be discussed.
Viewing Asia as a whole, one realizes that several developed countries e.g. Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan have already responded appropriately to the rising need of services for the prevention and care of birth defects/genetic disorders. On the other hand, developing countries e.g. Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand are still struggling due to socioeconomic, cultural, ethical, legal, social issues, competing health priorities and inadequate human and material resources.