om, I am a bad guy. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I want to be a good son but I cannot be in the present. I understand I have to take family responsibilities but I couldn’t. So forgive me, please. I wish to be a good son in the next life.”
This is the last letter a mom received from her lovely son before he committed suicide last year. These kinds of letters have been appearing in a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, founded in 1997, due to the consequences of chronic interethnic conflict between Karen and Burmese. Around 10,000 refugees remain in the camp, but this has not stopped the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from reducing the budget for refugee camps in this region. Budget reductions seriously affect the quality of social services in this camp, preventing refugees from receiving effective health treatment for leukemia, effective support for leprous patients, and effective suicide prevention activities
The camp is facing a shortage of medical care and effective medicine. Paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, has become a major treatment to cure almost every illness. On top of that, there are rare diseases in this camp. Some patients die from common diseases, and other patients continuously get worse from illnesses, that could be cured if they could access enough health care.

h Kaw Say, pictured below, has been suffering from leukemia since he was nine years old. He has to lie down on his bed every day. He is fed four meals per day by tube. When he sees his sisters playing, he cries. Sometimes he cries but his family doesn’t know why he is crying. His parents spend 7,000 baht for his food and medicine. They want to see him go to school and play with his sisters. They are very sad for their son, especially when they see him crying. They believe that their son was over anaesthetized when the doctor checked his bone marrow. His father says, “There was a boy in Mae Sot who had the same disease as my son. Now he has been cured and becomes an adult but my son is still suffering.”

ue to the declining budget for social services, some chronic patients are ignored instead of being treated warmly—especially leprous patients. Ideally, leprous patients should get safe housing and be treated with drugs under the intensive care of physicians. If this kind of disease is not treated, it can transmit to other people. But in this refugee camp, one leprous grandma, Daw Yin Kyi, pictured below, does not get any care. She stays alone in her old tattered house. She cannot go anywhere. When she stands up she feels dizzy and sometimes falls down on the ground. She cannot eat even a small plate of rice—three or four spoons per meal is enough for her. Every day, one little boy brings her rice because she has no fingers to handle the rice pot to cook her meals. She has no contact with her only son. She heard that her son sold her land without her permission. Even though she wants to go back to her brother in Myanmar, she worries that she will be a big burden for their family. “I want to die; I am really disappointed to be alive. I am waiting for God’s calling time,” she says.

ost people care about visible physical illnesses, but a different silent killer is threatening this refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border. A few weeks ago, Naw May Kher’s husband committed suicide in their house, hanging himself on the bamboo she is pointing at (pictured below). She says, “My husband was an alcoholic and never helped me to earn money.”
She feels like her husband was useless for her, and her situation is the same regardless of his fate. From 2017 to early 2018, 19 people in this refugee camp attempted suicide and seven succeeded. Most of them used rope, consumed poison, or used a weapon to commit suicide. In 2017, the International Organization of Migration released a report showing that the suicide rate in another camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, Mae La camp, was more than three times the global suicide rate. The effect of an uncertain future, lack of freedom, and decreasing support from the international community is causing this crisis. Since the support was cut, psychosocial workers in this refugee camp have not been able to increase suicide prevention awareness effectively.
In this refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, the amount of suicide cases is increasing because of a lack of prevention activities; the leprous patients are housebound without hope of a cure; and leukemia patients are not getting effective treatment. These are the consequences of the UNHCR reducing its budget for social services. The refugees who deal with these diseases have been suffering and searching for the way out of their illness. However, some are still struggling and some made their own solutions, such as committing suicide. The UNHCR should give full financial support for social services. Camp residents can use the money for a hospital, medicine for patients, and to employ skillful doctors so all patients will get better treatment. Moreover, if the leprous patients are in a safe house with caring social workers, they will not feel lonely. The social service workers could also carry out more activities for treating mental illness. Should these cases be addressed urgently or will the UNHCR just watch and record people getting stuck in these situations?

Vensang Thong is from Naga, which is located on the India-Burma border. He is interested in politics and is currently studying peace and conflict at a university-level program on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. He believes in peaceful coexistence among ethnic diversities and is really passionate about building a peaceful society through mutual respect based on human rights. He is enthusiastic to contribute his experience and knowledge to his society, learn new experiences from different cultures, and equip himself to catch up with the ever-changing world.

Paw Htoh Keet Wah was born in a small village in Karen State, Burma. She came from a poor family and could not pay the school fee to study in Burma, so she came to the border of Thailand and Myanmar for her education in 2006. She graduated high school in 2012, continued to study, and taught two years of primary school in Karen State. Currently, she is attending a university-level program on Thai-Myanmar border.