On 9 November 2017, MFU held a ceremony to present its Wellness Centre project. This centre will serve as a one-stop service health center for improving the quality of life and health of people in Cluster 2 of the Upper Northern Provinces, (Chiang Rai, Phrae, Phayao and Nan). The ceremony aimed at introducing the Wellness Center to the public and also reporting on the project’s progress and related activities.
MFU President Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vanchai Sirichana explained, “The MFU Wellness Center will be located in the area of MFU Medical Center and the construction period is 2018-2020.”
Additionally, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vanchai mentioned that to respond to the need for health care services in this region, MFU has offered the Applied Thai Traditional Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine programmes since the beginning of the university’s operation. After that, MFU provided more healthcare-related programmes, namely, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine as well as Medicine and Dentistry. When the government realized MFU’s intention to the improve the quality of healthcare system in Northern Thailand and the Greater Mekong Subregion, the government allocated 4,000 million baht to support the MFU Medical Centre Project and another 700 million baht to the Dental Centre Project.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vanchai added that with the experience of teaching Applied Thai Traditional Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, MFU has discovered that these two programmes emphasize maintaining of good health and prevention of diseases, while conventional medicine focuses on the treatment of diseases. Therefore, MFU has integrated alternative and conventional medicine together so that good health through preventive medicine would contribute to an increase in people’s work efficiency and quality of life, reducing the government’s health expenditures in the process.
“Our wellness centre desires to help people in Northern Thailand and the Greater Mekong Subregion to prevent illnesses and have good health. For people suffering from their illnesses, we can transfer them here so they can receive additional medical services at the MFU Medical Centre. Moreover, the centre will provide some free services in 2018 to mark the first year of its operation,” Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vanchai declared.
Acting Head of the MFU Wellness Centre, Pol. Lt. Gen. Boontiva Boonyuen, also expressed that the MFU Wellness Centre aims to educate people, through workshops and health training sessions, on how to develop healthy behaviour that is suitable for people in each generation.
Furthermore, during the opening ceremony, a series of interesting activities was offered, including a seminar on health care, demonstrations of health products and services, and free medical check-ups, all of which were specially planned for participants.
On the whole, this wellness centre definitely will be one of the great health centres offering services to improve the quality of health of people in the region as well as fostering developments in future health care systems.
