About 40% of Thais are thalassemia carriers

About 40% of Thais are thalassemia carriers
Around 40% of Thais are genetic carriers of thalassemia, the highest rate in the world, health experts said yesterday. The Public Health Ministry has combated the blood-disorder disease for more than 50 years, but the number of patients here is still high with around 600,000 cases, according to the Department of Medical Sciences.

Another 24 million people are genetic carriers of thalassemia and could pass on the disease to their children, department chief Dr Paijit Warachit said.

He urged married couples to have a health check to see if they carry the disease to prevent them passing it to their children.

The National Health Security Office provided free thalassemia diagnosis, but only small number of people bothered, he said, probably because most people were unaware of the danger of the disease.

The 12th National Thalassemia Conference begins in Udon Thani province today and continues until Friday.

Source - Bangkok Post

Guys, if you are married to a Thai and do not have this checked you could be very sorry. It almost killed my wife. If they have Thalaassima and take iron it could kill them. The thing about this stuff is that they will be anemic. In the states where I was the first thing they said was take iron. Well she got worse. We were lucky that the doc was fresh out of med school and started checking for everything when he told us she had Thalassima minor. Thalassima Major is the bad one but the minor can do a person in if not careful.

Never give Thais vitimins with iron unless you know if they have this or not.

By the way a lot of meds have iron in them also. Be aware!!!

I'm glad this topic has been raised, a few years back after the birth of our 3rd child, my wife hit a low, and I do mean LOW.

After the usual initial thoughts of post natal this and that, our doctor finally thought it would be a good idea to send her to the hospital for a round of check ups as nothing improved, as the course of IRON tablets seemed to be making things worse.

It took a while for the diagnosis to come back, but it turned out to be a symptom called Graves Disease, which is something that affects the thyroid gland and eyes.

She has been getting treated successfully thankfully and all seems to be well.

But I will be mentioning this to our doctor just incase of any problems in the future...

admin wrote:About 40% of Thais are thalassemia carriers


The National Health Security Office provided free thalassemia diagnosis, but only small number of people bothered, he said, probably because most people were unaware of the danger of the disease.

The 12th National Thalassemia Conference begins in Udon Thani province today and continues until Friday.

Source - Bangkok Post

Is the Health Security still offering free testing? And, if so, where? Is thalassemia testing normally done when a person goes for their annual check up? I've never seen it listed in my test results.

more info: Thalassemia= a blood disorder that causes the body to produce less hemoglobin (red blood cells). low levels of hemoglobin may cause anemia (an illness that makes you feel weawk and tired. severe cases of anemia may damage organs and can result in death. if you have mild Thalassemia, it's the most common form and does not require treatment. but intermediate or more severe, treatments include taking folic acid and blood transfusion. try to avoid taking iron or multivitamins containing iron, medications that treat malaria, some antibiotics like sulfonaminde,and vitamin C (which may increase the amount of iron that your body absorbs). just want to share the information about the disease which are common among thais. i myself have a thai fiance and concern whether or not she has it. will take her to the doc and get her tested.

if you are considering having children, you would probably also want to be tested yourself. The combination of defects in the genes contributed by both your fianc้ and you determine the chances of a problem and the chances for varying degrees of severity.

I will leave it to someone skilled in the art to make recommendations, but it seems to me that in extreme, if there is only one gene missing between the two of you, the presence of thalassemia probably won't be a problem. If at the other extreme, if all of the copies of the gene would be missing in some combination of chromosomes from your fianc้ or wife and you, then it seems there would be great risk of having a serverly affected child.[/i]f you