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 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 was a constructed and pre-tested face-to-face interviews adapted from WHOQOL-BREF with ethical approval from Chulalongkorn University. Data were analyzed by applying descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, range and median) and inferential statistics (unpaired t–test and one–way ANOVA) to examine the relationship between health-related quality of life and socio-demographic characteristics, living and working conditions, and accessibility to health care services. Statistical significance was set as p<0.05. The results revealed that 94.00% of respondents reported moderate level of health-related quality of life. The rest were low and high, 3.25% and 2.75% respectively. For socio-demographic characteristics, respondents' marital status, having family members living in Thailand, Thai language skills, income, occupation, history of sickness and getting treatment when sick were discovered to have association with health-related quality of life. For living and working conditions, respondents' living place, work permit, length of current job and satisfaction on work conditions were significantly associated health-related quality of life. For accessibility to health care services, perception on difficulty to go to the health facility, crowdedness of the health facility and having health insurance card were found to be associated with health-related quality of life. Further longitudinal researches are recommended to avoid seasonal variation, and policies to improve access to health care services and higher health-related quality of life for migrant workers in Thailand deserve the governmental agency’s attention.