Lao Voices

Bridge the Gap is “group of surgeons from the Netherlands who operate as many patients with a cleft palate as they can while training Vietnamese and Lao surgeons and dentists.” In January 2008, the team traveled to Laos for the third year in a row to perform medical treatments for people with face deformities at [...]

The Land of Smiles is not only known for tourism. How about checking into a Thai hospital in Bangkok for a fraction of the cost in the US? I wonder how much it would cost to have my braces done there. Maybe I can live in Laos and then cross over for a monthly check [...]

As a follow up to the long and prosperous post, it was time to elaborate on the costs of health care in the US. For this, I use a report of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that takes hospital charges as a proxy for the rate of increases and to show where the [...]

Wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous new year!
Talking about health and prosperity: below a graph where the average life expectancy is displayed per country versus the costs of health care in that particular country. Conclusion: If you want to live long at reasonable costs you might want to go to Japan.

Shorter lived and immensely [...]

For those that use time as an excuse for not exercising to better heath, say no more because getting healthier doesn’t have to mean an outrageous time commitment. I came across good tips in a Thai magazine that experts say 60 seconds can improve your health. So try these tips…

Wash your hands after [...]

On a foggy morning of November 7 th, a 901-foot container ship sideswiped the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The crash spilled 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay. Authorities shut down many of the beaches, including Baker Beach, Crissy Field, China Beach, Kirby Cove and Fort Point due to the contamination. [...]

When we hear the term “smoking,” most of us only think of cigarettes. As mentioned by Dallas that he feels that the novice monks violated rule #5 of the percepts that reads, “Suramerayamajja pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami, I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.” As Dallas [...]

Video description: HOUAY NAMIEN, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, 16 November 2007 - Worldwide, measles kills more children than any other preventable disease, and Laos suffers regular outbreaks, including two this year that killed at least 10 children.
UNICEF Representative in Lao PDR Laila Ismail-Khan said that the government’s commitment to eliminate measles by 2012 was cost-effective [...]

Lao movie about bird flu, produced by Lao Art Media.
Part 1

After the recent Bird Flu outbreaks in Laos and the fear of human-to-human transfer of the H5N1 virus, and watching movies such as Grindhouse and 28 week later I started wondering what would happen to a society when a fullblown lethal virus would spread.
Oddly enough, the closest proxy that delivers insight to an outbreak comes [...]