Raid Conducted On Illegal Clinics In Bangkok

[webfact]

Raid conducted on illegal clinics

Jessada Jantarak

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- Police yesterday raided four illegal clinics in Bangkok and arrested four suspects.

These clinics have been operating without a proper licence, and they have relied on impostor doctors to provide treatment to unknowing patients.

Moreover, they have supplied false diagnosis certificates to civil servants who want to take sick leave, and have even secretly sold pseudoephedrine.

Once widely used in cold medicine, pseudoephedrine is now a banned chemical because it is a precursor to methamphetamines. "We are cracking down on the illegal clinics. We have to prevent the distribution of pseudoephedrine," Pasit Sakdanarong, an adviser to the public health minister, said yesterday.

"We have found that there are between 70 and 80 illegal clinics in Bangkok. We will close down all of them," Pasit vowed.

Four suspects arrested yesterday were Jirasit Wijipaet, Kwanlada Taengthongkham, Atcharin Sudkangwarn and Ubon Pimpapak.

Police have already charged them with illegally running clinics, practising medicine without any licence, issuing false diagnosis certificates and selling banned medicine.

"We will investigate these cases further to nail all culprits," Pol Colonel Kamchamnarn said in his capacity as the commander of National Police Office's Children and Women Protection Sub-Division.

-- The Nation 2012-10-22

[lizardtongue]

Moreover, they have supplied false diagnosis certificates to civil servants who want to take sick leave, and have even secretly sold pseudoephedrine.

About time something is done to close these clinics down, I assume that if they are aware civil servants have been supplied with false certificates they will investigate that further and bring the offenders to justice?

I guess there will have to be a few 'inactive posts' created to house the offenders?

[chooka]

Pirated CD's, handbags and watches, now a crackdown on pirated clinics and doctors. Thailand the copied HUB of the world.

[noitom]

Another Thai crackdown.

[animatic]

Pirated CD's, handbags and watches, now a crackdown on pirated clinics and doctors. Thailand the copied HUB of the world.

Hub Of Pirates

[pete66]

How can shutting down these clinics reduce meth production? If anything, it will have the opposite effect, as the pseudoephedrine pills used as slimming aids will no longer have a market. Perhaps the police have a use for all the pseudoephedrine they are now collecting from clinics?

[weescotsguy66]

"Once widely used in cold medicine, pseudoephedrine is now a banned chemical because it is a precursor to methamphetamines. "We are cracking down on the illegal clinics. We have to prevent the distribution of pseudoephedrine," Pasit Sakdanarong, an adviser to the public health minister, said yesterday."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine

We are we going to ban Sudafed, Nurofed etc etc

Just wished that the media would do some of their own research before publishing what they are being fed by the government.

Yes of course get rid of illegal clinics but make sure your report is accurate.

[theajarn]

Good to see the start of this crack down producing results. As for pseudoephedrine, the problem associated with it might not have been as big a problem as it is today had the media not made such a big deal out of it. Now people are all like "WHOAH... REALLY? You can make DRUuuuuuUUUGs from it?". I used to get the stuff all the time, each time I went to see a doc about my sons' cold. At one point we were even chucking away bottles of it because we thought it was such a common and useless drug the way it was given away so readily.

That was, until the media coverage...

[fstarbkk]

"Once widely used in cold medicine, pseudoephedrine is now a banned chemical because it is a precursor to methamphetamines. "We are cracking down on the illegal clinics. We have to prevent the distribution of pseudoephedrine," Pasit Sakdanarong, an adviser to the public health minister, said yesterday."

http://en.wikipedia....Pseudoephedrine

We are we going to ban Sudafed, Nurofed etc etc

Just wished that the media would do some of their own research before publishing what they are being fed by the government.

Yes of course get rid of illegal clinics but make sure your report is accurate.

I love the logic of these people - Our government is so inept that Millions and millions of tablets containing a precursor to Speed can walk out the back-door of ur own government's hospitals. Then we solve the problem by issuing a blanket-ban and thus depriving legitimate users of this very useful medication = Pouring out the baby with the bathwater.

It occured to me that WATER is essential in the production of speed, as well as many other dangerous and illegal drugs. Why don't we play safe an ban it as well!

Edited October 22, 2012 by fstarbkk

[missionrat]

Frustrating for me that pseudo ephedrine is illegal here. It is by far the best decongestant around and as an allergy sufferer, it is a life-saver during strong allergy reactions. None of the other decongestants that I've found Thai pharmacies even come close.

[Pib]

OK, four illegal clinics down....thousands to go.

[MEL1]

"BANGKOK: -- Police yesterday raided four illegal clinics in Bangkok and arrested four suspects.

These clinics have been operating without a proper licence..."

____________

Would these be translated as 'gambling' clinics? I'm surprised the BIB had the audacity to move in....as maybe sick notes and special flu tablets may have been issued to Chalerm from one of them.

-mel.

[SOTIRIOS]

...just 9,996 to go.........(in Bangkok alone)......

....can you say, 'cottage industry'.............???

[SICHONSTEVE]

"Once widely used in cold medicine, pseudoephedrine is now a banned chemical because it is a precursor to methamphetamines. "We are cracking down on the illegal clinics. We have to prevent the distribution of pseudoephedrine," Pasit Sakdanarong, an adviser to the public health minister, said yesterday."

http://en.wikipedia....Pseudoephedrine

We are we going to ban Sudafed, Nurofed etc etc

Just wished that the media would do some of their own research before publishing what they are being fed by the government.

Yes of course get rid of illegal clinics but make sure your report is accurate.

They should ban these as they are bad for your health - for example: Tylenol is something that I will never take again as overusage leads to worse headaches in the future and all sorts of hidden side affects!!

[asiawatcher]

A crackdown on what constitutes "illegal" in Thailand? What? Didn't they know they have to pay to be legal and all is out of sight and mind?

[Route21]

http://en.wikipedia....Pseudoephedrine

We are we going to ban Sudafed, Nurofed etc etc

Just wished that the media would do some of their own research before publishing what they are being fed by the government.

Yes of course get rid of illegal clinics but make sure your report is accurate.

Not sure which bit you are suggesting is inaccurate?

After some quickie Wiki research, I found 2 other, related articles. 1 re Methamphetamines and another re Pseudoephedrine:

http://en.wikipedia....thamphetamines:

"The six major routes of production [of Methamphetamines] begin with either phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) or with one of the isomeric compounds pseudoephedrine and ephedrine."

That's why it was made illegal ages ago in the Middle East, where I was based until recently.

It's a pity, as, unlike the original Contact capsules that I used to take, Sudafed didn't cause drowsiness (in fact the opposite):

http://en.wikipedia....seudoephedrine:

"It may be used as a nasal/sinus decongestant, as a stimulant,^[2] or as a wakefulness-promoting agent."

Regards

R21

[Sateev]

Now, getting a driver's license is gonna take two days or more. I hope they don't shut down my, "You seem to be breathing, sir. That will be 100 baht" medical certificate provider, next to the good hardware store in Chatuchak...

[jkrause1314]

In advance, I apologize for the length of the post, but it is necessary to complete my thoughts and will be my only post in the forum ever as until something important that I know about is addressed I keep quiet. As a member of the medical profession, I thinkI can offer a bit of insight that is unique to the forum but requires explanation. Thanks for feedback...

Although this is just a small start to a much bigger problem that we all know and complain about, it's great they got these guys. From the perspective of a health care provider, I refuse to go to see any doctor here for any reason. If I were in a major accident, I would have to be sent out, Cambodia (Yes, it's better there), Hong Kong, Singapore and many other places have trustworthy care providers, clinics and hospitals. In any case, never try to seek the knowledge from a clinic or hospital here and please don't have a service like surgery done here. Afterwards, they will tell you that it's all done and it will seem much more pleasant and comfortable than any previous procedure. That's because they never actually performed the real operation. As with everything else, they just patched it up and it will cause more problems in the future, worse problems than to begin with.

This happened to me and I have physical proof and statements from competent providers in other countries to prove it. In my case, it was a root canal and I had it done at a hospital that will remain unnamed for now in Udon Thani. According to the local papers, this specific dentist is one of the best in Thailand. Since my natural instinct leans towards skepticism here. I went elsewhere to have a full set of X-rays done immediately before and after the appointment with official timestamps. Since I am not a dentist but am capable of extracting diagnostic information from X-rays, I had to use a dental database to compare my X-rays with others who had had the same procedure performed. To the best of my ability, it was easy for me to see that the dentist had done something, but the root had not been removed as it should have been. The dentist basically did a giant filling, not the operation I paid for.

I used a dentist in Phnom Phen to finish the rest of my dental work on my following visa run. He concurred that the procedure was not done and was shocked that any real dentist would do this. He said that had I not pursued it, I would have ended up with dentures by the age of 40 because of the spread of calcium blockage throughout my roots, which is the reason a root canal is performed in the first place, to prevent calcium deposits that had entered through a cavity that was not filled in time. It would have been very painful but slowly over time. It may not have caught my attention enough to seek more treatment so could go unnoticed until the point of no return. They were willing to make a statement based on the timestamps of the X-rays that in that time period, there had not been a root canal on that tooth. I already knew that though, just keeping it for the record. Action against the hospital and dentist had already been pursued the day following the procedure and was met with the dentist saying, "Please leave my office! I am busy and don't have time for this...I am a doctor and if you don't trust my work, then you should not have come here!"

I followed her as she left the room, explaining, "This is not a matter of trust. I trusted you when I sat down to have the root canal done. This is a matter of fact and now a matter of professional courtesy. I am not ignorant. Please speak to me like you speak to your colleagues. I will understand." Her response was, "I finished my work with you and am done with this conversation. Talk to the people at the front about it." She claimed that all her work is 100% proper. I could prove that statement wrong and had done so just prior so how she could look at improper work and immediately make that statement was beyond me.

While waitiing to speak to her that day, I only wanted to know if there was a medical reason to leave the root in that tooth. If what she had done was to save a root and also fix the problem, I would have been praising her. I had not entered her office to scold or display her ignorance to her. She did that herself. Of course, the front desk had no idea and told us to sit and wait, which we did, for a hospital supervisor who also could not say anything that carried meaning. I didn't expect much to begin with. I just wanted, first to know why this had occurred, and once known that it was done so maliciously, wanted the hospital to know that it occurred and maybe the next time a patient will be more fortunate since the majority of her patients saved up a long time for such a procedure and a similar instance could ruin a person's life and destroy a family who may have to help support that person. I can't guarantee that I accomplished this, but the emotion she displayed made me think that the case could stick with her and there is a small possibility of her going the extra millimeter to finish in the future.

That's the clearest of my examples of poor quality doctors here. Others tried to give me pills and injections and would not provide the name of the medication saying, "I doctor, you not. You trust doctor or get out now!" After saying that he was incorrect already about my profession not being a doctor, I quickly got up and walked out with a staff of people chasing me for the payment for the little he had done (One pill and a 5 minutefiling of a chipped tooth). I told them that in this case, "I was following the doctor's orders strictly since he told me to get out. He never said anything about payment." They tried to say they were calling the police, but I had already identified one of the pills he gave me as a paracetamol with 8mg of codeine in it. I asked them if they would be willing to explain the handing out of illegal medication that had occurred if they did call. They backed down as I drove away. I have not heard anything abou it since. Other times, doctors told me that I should take Xanax with alcohol to help stay awake for a long drive. Some refused to do work on me because, "[They] require the patient to completely trust and follow the instructions of the doctor." They said that my questions made them think that I could not do that and I should go somewhere else. There are more but that's just me.

Now, to speak to the more political side of this, I think one of the biggest reasons for poor health care is the fear of causing pain, which cannot be controlled here with all narcotic painkillers made illegal. I know root canals are painful following a well-performed operation. In America, the patient would typically be given a weeks worth (21 pills) of Vicodin or Percocet, in an instance of very clean procedure, maybe paracetamol with codeine. All those are illegal here so, although I'm sure there are some instances of complete incompetence, there are many foreign educated doctors that I am sure are capable of doing the procedure correctly but know that the result will leave the patient in unbearable pain for a few days, which I was ready to accept. Then the patient is unhappy, complains, and makes the doctor look bad when in fact it's common and inherent.

I offer that explanation after having such great quality care in Cambodia from a locally educated dentist. It is not possible that the university in Phnom Phen is of higher quality than the university in America that my dentist went to for her degree and could speak the English to prove it (Not bought on Khaosan road). We even had a short discussion of her experience there since I knew the town quite well. Since painkillers are available there I concluded that the inability to control the pain following a properly performed operation is part of poor treatment in Thailand, not corruption or incompetence. Not every person needing narcotics is a junkie and not everybody with a tuffed up nose is a speedfreak. Actually, compared to the valid uses, improper use of these medications is very uncommon (<.1% of the industry).

Allowing the doctors to alleviate and monitor patients with issues of pain would limprove health acre here, but increasingly strict drug enforcement has come to a "zero tolerance" policy that most other countries tried and abandoned due to failure. Pseudoephedrine, which thousands of studies have shown is by far the most effective decongestant with almost zero side effects is a great example of this. Above, people say it has weight control uses and is a stimulant in itself. The truth is that they must be thinking of its levorotary isomer, ephedrine, which mimics adrenaline in the brain much like amphetamine does. Pseudoephedrine has even been considered by the FDA safe for children as young as 3 years old which even caffeine has not. Pseudoephedrine is a natural blessing for the medical establishment. I say natural because it can be extracted from a plant in it's medically useful state so technically you could even say it's organic. Billions of dollars have gone to drug discovery companies to develop something as effective, but have not yet found one and most likely will never do so. Before pseudoephedrine was common, ephedrine was used, which often has side effects.

The most interesting thing that came from the brief reading I did before writing this, was that pharmaceutical companies have found a new way to produce pseudoephedrine, which in the past required an expensive inefficient process that lent itself to contamination, so most companies were still using extraction to produce it for pharmaceutical use. The new technique is much more efficient and can be done in massive quantities without many likely problems arising. It uses relatively cheap precursors that are available to the chemists that work in these labs and very little effort was put into discovering the new procedure. How could that be? They adopted it from THE BURMESE DRUG CARTEL'S PROCEDURE for making it. All those pills that were stolen were never going to Myanmar to make Yabaa. They must have been used within Thailand's borders to do so.

The people producing and trafficking Yabaa have a very good procedure in place to consistently make those pills. They are probably even of higher quality control checks than some pharmaceuticals made here. There is no way they would want to bring any attention to themselves by using cold pills to make methamphetamine, which must be reduced from ephedrine or pseudoephedrine to make the proper stereoisomer. They make the correct isomers (The same ones found in nature) using a technique that had never been done before. Since the discovery by western scientists, this process has been patented and can be found online easily enough. An organic chemist with millions of dollars worth of equipment would be the only person or group who could do it so it's not like the speedfreaks are sitting in a garage with explosive materials somewhere following this method like they do with the Birch reduction of pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine blowing themselves up. This is a patent that only a very knowledgable chemist could reproduce (It's far beyond my knowledge of chemistry, which is intermediate). So let's allow doctors to give people medication that works and then look for the people who are not using it for medical purposes here in Thailand and not claim that all these pills that were stolen were going across a border.

To advance the forum, please be aware of the issues when posting. Like every other event that causes the foreigners to run their mouths about this or that problem, this is a case that is probably not a matter of the individuals level of competence. It's a problem that is a part of a much larger system, even larger than most of us understand and speak of as corruption. It comes from the fact that information is extremely valuable here and is losing value in other parts of the world with people sharing electronically. Thai people have been lied to in every case from the doctors office to the motor oil that I bought today, where the Thai claims it to be for an engine that should never use it. The English on the bottle and standard system of classification is correct though. It's a part of the culture that only knows nicknames and not real names so nobody can tell the police who has committed a crime against them. It's a part of the fact that teachers apply to the government who then place them in schools based on what they want that school to learn, and not allowing schools and teachers to choose each other. There are thousands of more examples of the system of control that ensure all Thai working class spend all their money that they made working for the day before they get home to feed their family, and fix the engine that the oil destroyed, and go to the dentist again, etc.

200+ years ago, the slaves in the southern USA received the same basic needs and worked equally as hard because they were not considered people by law at that time. This is what Thais unknowingly experience today. In America, common law changed all that through court decisions. The lack of common law is what is preventing change in Thailand. People often overlook the fact that this is a Constitutional Monarchy and expect it to operate like other governments. Once understood, many of the crazy things that we see happen are easy to explain.

When you are able to let go of western politics, you'll see that, much like monarchies of the past, the people have no right to property, protection, or even life. In war, the military's role is to protect the monarchy, not the population as it is in the western world. Despite what some may believe, they have done a good job to this point of keeping Thailand and its population exactly as they want it to be, but the digital age and the transition that is eminent is putting some strain on the current system. The future of Thailand will be a very interesting thing to watch occur because it hasn't happened in the same way in my lifetime. It's possible it may not even change and will remain under the same Constitution. Nobody really knows...but this has happened before and I am really tired of hearing foreigners discussing the same issue again and again under a different heading and each person with an official to blame or corruption to point out. I'd like to see a more complete picture come together that explains the problems that are discussed daily on this board; education, corruption, floods, scams, visas, etc. They are all linked with a very specific goal in mind and a those who were smart enough to put it all together without missing even the smallest detail were mildly successful accomplishing that goal, as of today.

As outsiders who have seen systems of governance that are very different and often considered much more functional in many ways, we should try to take note of each minor thing everyday that is adding to the oppression and glass ceiling that keep the poor in thier place, despite how much effort or money is put towards an individual's ability to get on the other side of that ceiling. The country's policy towards financial empowerment as of now should be given the slogan, "If your poor, become a whore." I really don't see other people who accomplish the rags to riches stories that occur elsewhere and it takes more than corruption to oppress a large group of people with such precision and accuracy.

Busting a few clinics is great but beyond the initial post, the typical onslaught of blame that fails to provide a complete description of the events in Thailand and their actual causes is disappointing. People are motivated by incentives and most of the time, the incentives that cause a behavior are not accurately assessed. That's what occurs in most of the posts throughout the forum. Thai people are fairly isolated as a population so it is easier for us to notice these things, but I would love to get some input from Thais who have understood a different life than the life of the average Thai who have never lived or studied abroad. Often, it's those same Thais that are maintaining the system instead of changing it so what they know, the really valuable information about the bigger picture here , is not often discussed. The best we can do is to notice, and put it in as a piece of the puzzle. It's just that there is no place to stand up the box and find the corner pieces. I'd really like to see a category like that on this forum that doesn't lead to blame and complaints. This will be my one and only post until then, but I have to thank the forum for the information I read regularly.

[Keesters]

OK, four illegal clinics down....thousands to go.

there just ain't enough (honest) police to do this.

[jkrause1314]

Was that meant to be sarcastic? Considering the deeper problems I thought might increase the overall value of the forum I mentioned in the previous post, I thought the next person may talk about something different...

There are less observant posters in this forum than there are honest police in Thailand, but rarely is that mentioned. A problem must be observed completely before it can be fixed from its roots. To say that the lack of honest police is the problem is doing the same thing that is often complained about with Thai worksmanship...The problem continues to receive the attention it needs to say it's fixed but hasn't actually been identified. Like using glue when some proper arcwelding would be required.