HEALTH
H.M.K picture Apart from livelihood, Health is obviously another main concern in the welfare of any people. Health, for that reason, is also another main and close concern of His Majesty, especially as his Royal father, as already mentioned, is regarded as the Father of the modern Thai Medical Profession. His Majesty's activities range far and wide into many spheres and many areas of Health, staring with the physical contribution through attendances at Meetings of medical personnel or on medical matters such as the graduation and other ceremonies of medical students where he always gives appropriate words of advice and raises appropriate problems such as the growing brain drain of medical graduater to foreign countries and the reverse lack of medical personnel in provincial areas. He has personally observed this latter problem during his frequent trips to those areas and especially to the remote and border districts where even rudimentary facilities of health are sometimes lacking. Since a long time, therefore, he has set up his personal medical units always to accompany him on these trips and to stay for quite a while to tend to the maladies of the people some of whom see a doctor or a dentist for the very first time on such an occasion. For those villagers who need surgery or prolonged care His Majesty not only shoulders the cost of such operations or treatment in provincial hospitals or hospitals in the capital city of Bangkok but also pays for all the necessary expenses which might be incurred during the transportaion of patients, hospital fees and miscellaneous fees such as household expenses during the hospitalization of the family's breadwinner. During the extended tours to visit people in rural and remote areas, His Majesty has instructed that clinics be established at the entrances to the grounds of the Royal Residences which are open to all at no cost and are staffed by His Majesty's Personal Physician, doctors and nurses attached to the Royal Medical Division as well as volunteer doctors from the Medical Departments of the various Armed Forces and medical personnel attached to the Ministry of Public Health serving in the region. Experienced surgeons of The Royal College of Surgeons also volunteer their services and perform surgery in the provincial hospitals upon the patients under expenses to the Privy Purse at the barest minimum,