A central budget of 3.15 billion baht has been approved to reward village health and public health volunteers to strengthen their morale in the fight against COVID-19.
According to Deputy government spokesperson Traisulee Traisoranakul, village health volunteers and public health volunteers will receive an additional 500 baht per month each for their services between October 2021 to March 2022. The volunteers receive 1,000 baht each month for their services to the general public. She said the government hopes that this will boost their morale as they perform additional duties to contain the pandemic.
Volunteers have taken on additional responsibilities to combat the spread of the virus. They assisted officials in publicizing information to local communities on the pandemic such as updates on the situation and COVID-19 vaccines. The volunteers also performed surveys to accommodate people’s vaccinations and to assist COVID-19 patients at home or in community isolation centers. There are currently 1,039,729 village health volunteers and 10,577 public health volunteers in Thailand.
The Ministry of Public Health has assigned responsibilities to volunteers to monitor, prevent, and contain the virus in communities since February 2020. As a result, more than 14 million homes have been notified about the pandemic, and 7.42 million people have received updates and learned how to protect themselves from the virus. Volunteers encouraged more than 14 million people over the age of 60 to receive their first vaccination, and more than 9.6 million received their second dose of the vaccine.