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Rosana Tositrakul, Thai Holistic Health Foundation
In January of 2002, at the suggestion of Khun Sanitsuda Ekichai, a reporter for the Bangkok Post, I traveled to the office of Rosana Tositrakul to meet her and learn about her work with holistic medicine. Her office is in a small house, about twenty minutes from the Bangkok airport. In the garage, she has opened a store to sell the herbs and traditional medicines that are produced by her NGO, "Thai Holistic Health Foundation." We sat in her office and chatted for nearly an hour and then she treated me to a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant. Khun Rosana, known throughout Thailand for her recent, very public work to end corruption in the Thai government, particularly within the ministry of health, and her unsuccessful but notable campaign for a seat in the Bangkok senate, has worked for twenty years to develop her holistic health project. A 1980 graduate of Thammasat University, Thailand's most prestigious, secular university, she has devoted herself to her work and now to a young daughter, born to her later in life, as well. Khun Rosana is among the three people I met while in Thailand who have been identified among the "Next Generation" of Thai leaders. I felt honored that she would take the time out of her very busy schedule to explain to me some basic facts about her work. Rosana was among the group of young people who came into their social and political consciousness during the tumultuous decades of the 1970's and 1980's when Thailand was ruled by a military dictatorship. While some of the youth of her time were intent on seizing power from the government, she chose, under the influence of Gandhi and religious Buddhism's concepts of "ahimsa," or nonviolence, to work for social change through a more grassroots model of empowerment. After she graduated from Thammasat with a mass communications degree, she joined with a young friend whose studies were in pharmacology, to begin a project that uses medicine as a way to promote the self reliance of people. At that time, the government placed little to no value on traditional medicine. They deemed it "unscientific." Yet, 30% of the people in Thailand had no access to medical services provided by the government at that time when, ironically, 80% of the illnesses could have been treated simply through traditional means. She and her friend began their project in a very slow, simple, and determined manner. They went to a village and befriended the head man, Chatchunseauw, and slowly gained his faith. His people were very traditional, not used to being asked for their knowledge or opinions, and they tended to see themselves in a humble, even inferior, light. Khun Sanitsuda and her partner believed that if they could slowly gain information about how just one herb had been used in that village's history to treat an illness this would be their opening to the knowledge that was being lost due to the government's disdain for traditional medicine. They would select safe, edible herbs that were easy to grow and were not toxic. For example, they would find that tumeric is an effective drug for the treatment of peptic ulcers. During their first decade of existence as a nonprofit, their main goal was to collect and disseminate knowledge. They were aided by the World Health Organization that launched a project in 1982 to promote just this kind of undertaking. UNICEF and German funding agencies also helped, providing almost 100% of their resources. They became the first NGO to work in this area and were aided by help from these larger organization's subcommittee for training and dissemination. They were able to make links with many community hospitals as well. Within three short years, they were able, also, for example, to help villagers reduce their costs ensued in relation to drugs by $12,000 baht to $3,000 baht in 1983. After their first decade of work, they began to turn their attention more toward the encouragement of self sufficiency by enabling farmers to grow, process and use the knowledge and the herbs themselves. There were, however, economic pressures in the villages. People did not want to spend too much time doing this, as it was time and labor intensive. They then realized they had to change their way of working with people if they were to be effective. They encouraged them to grow more fruit tree plants, as this was not as labor intensive. They utilized a Buddhist ceremony, phat baa, so that villagers would contribute medicinal plants, fruits and money to enable villagers to borrow and loan for agricultural items, like water pumps. They encouraged the people and the people began to double their return on their giving. During this decade they expanded their work to a total of thirteen villages in the Patchom district in the Yesotam province of Northeastern Thailand. As their work has progressed into its third decade, many changes have occurred in Thailand. Natural farming became popular in the 1990's and many students were encouraged to be farmers. Chemical free farming became especially important in the north east because of the mono-crop agriculture that was practiced in this region. Villagers began to run their own rice mills and Rosana's foundation found ways to help them with this. In addition to working from the grassroots, Rosana realized that they needed to find, in this next decade, ways to combine the consumer with the producer. They used a new method, whereby they connected urban consumers with grassroots producers. They began with rice. They have a farm outside of Bangkok where they have training centers for farmers who can come there to learn how to grow rice, chemical free, for one year.
Also, in this third decade, they have opened two shops where the items produced by the villagers are sold. They also have a health clinic that opened in the year 2000 in Patmonkha. They are exploring ayuravedic medicine at this clinic on land that belongs to a children's foundation. As of the year 2002, they have received patents from the government for five, legally distributed natural remedies, the first organization to do so in Thailand. Their newsletter has become a magazine that includes information about herbs in Thailand and is used as a reference manual for professionals.
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