Thank you to everyone for all your generous support to date - every donation has a big impact! Now our programme has become ever more crucial as risk communication and public engagement is at the forefront of efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19 in vulnerable populations including villagers, migrants and refugees living along this border region. Yesterday the virus arrived in Mae Sot where our Foundation is based, via a plane passenger from Bangkok. The refugee camps have been in lockdown since last week with only essential access. Our camp based refugee team are busy working to produce awareness materials in Karen & Burmese to share online and in our TVs in the Outpatient departments of the camp clinics and hospitals. We have 6 televisions in Mae La and Umpiem camps and 6 TVs operating in the local SMRU clinics serving migrants. We need to provide more televisions and more thumbdrives with relevant materials and we need your support to do this.

As the Director General of WHO reminded us yesterday in his television address - today is 24 March 2020 - World TB Day marking a year since World TB Day 2019, when we premiered our TB drama film 'Under the Mask' in Shwe Ko Ko and which has now reached over 12,500 villagers and migrants to date - these people are now aware of how to protect themselves from TB and how to adopt good health and hygiene practices. We are sure this public engagement outreach of TB awareness, another potentially fatal respiratory disease, which killed over 1.5 million people in 2018, will have assisted in heightening their understanding of the importance of protecting themselves from Covid-19. Now we are part of the WHO matrix working together under the Royal Thai Governments Public Health Office coordination strategy with all stakeholders.

Please continue to support if you can. Thank you. Mary