Nature of accessibility to health care services and health-related quality of life among adult Myanmar migrant workers in Mahachai Sub-District, Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this research was to assess the health-related quality of life among adult Myanmar migrant workers (age 18-59 years) in Mahachai Sub-district, Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand. It was a cross-sectional study. This research utilized the multi-staged sampling with 400 respondents for quantitative research, and two health care service providers for qualitative research. The data was collected in early February 2009. For quantitative study, the instrument used in this study was a constructed and pre-tested face-to-face interview adapted from WHOQOL-BREF, and for qualitative study, in-depth interview guidelines passing ethical review COA no. 108/2009 issued on 28 January 2009. Data was analyzed by applying descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, range and median) to describe the data, and inferential statistics (unpaired t-test and one-way ANOVA) to examine the relationships between independent and dependent variables. For qualitative data, ordering, coding summarizing and drawing conclusion were done. The results revealed that only 2.75% of the respondents had high level of health-related quality of life. The rest of the respondents reported that their health-related quality of life was moderate and low, 94.0% moderate level, followed by 3.25% low level of quality of life. For socio-demographic characteristics respondents who were married, having more than two family members living in Thailand, had stayed in Thailand more than or equal to eight years, could speak Thai language fluently, no education status, high income, manufacture or agriculture workers, no history of sickness within last four weeks, and having access to health care services and getting treatment when sick, were discovered to have higher mean score of quality of life than others. For living and working conditions, respondents who lived in a rent place, had work permit, length of current job 4 years or above and who were satisfied with working conditions had significantly higher health-related quality of life. For accessibility to health care services, perception of being difficult to go to the health facility, crowdedness of the health facility and having health insurance card were found to have associated with health-related quality of life. Overall findings indicated that the migrant workers were on the horned dilemma while searching for better quality of life. Future studies should consider many subgroups within Myanmar migrant workers as well as Thai workers to be able to compare the quality of life to provide stronger evidences. Finally, policies to improve access to health care services and higher quality of life in order to create a win-win situation for both migrant workers and host Thai nationals are recommended.