21/01/2025
The view from my morning walk.
Mckean Hospital is my favourite peaceful place to start the day.
“In 1908 Dr. James McKean requested the land known as Koh Klang, from the ruling prince of Chiang Mai, as it had formerly been where his elephants were kept. Dr. McKean asked to develop the land into a residential settlement for leprosy sufferers who were rejected from home and society. This became Thailand’s first settlement for leprosy patients. Within 30 years a model colony had been established, and included five different villages, hostels, clinic and hospital wards, workshops, a church and two schools.
Over the years some patients wanted to marry and return to community and McKean bought land and established clinics and leprosy communities in other areas. A total of 22 different leprosy villages were established in the north, each with a small clinic and a church, and usually a small school.
With the advent of effective drugs to treat and cure leprosy after 1970 McKean team focused on efforts to rehabilitate leprosy patients back into home and society. This involved public education, social work, vocational training and community based support. Integrated clinics were established in new areas so patients could get treatment nearer home, along with other general patients. McKean goal was also for leprosy village residents to have sustainable livelihoods and be better integrated into their local communities. McKean workers provided agricultural development training for the community, and integrated all children into the same schools.
From the mid-1980s Mckean adopted the broader plan to integrate patients with leprosy and disabilities in its hospital-based and community-based rehabilitation services, building a new hospital and expanding its physical therapy department and team. Facilities providing aids to mobility were expanded and included the prosthetics and orthotics department and a new wheelchair workshop, producing a range of push-pull tricycles and self-propelled wheelchairs, which were not commercially available at that time.
All patients, leprosy and disabled, were encouraged to relate together, learn self-care and receive training in organic farming and home-based activities to better enable them to have sustainable livelihoods back home.
McKean also initiated community-based rehabilitation projects in different districts of Chiang Mai, working with local families and communities to encourage awareness of the needs of disabled folk and the local provision of support, access and opportunity for the disabled members.
At the time of emphasizing rehabilitation into community McKean recognized that some patients were too old and disabled and dislocated from any family to be able to return to community. These folk were established in the village at the north end of McKean. Here they continue to receive support to have their own community living in small cottages, hostels and nursing home wards, .
However other needy people were also approaching McKean in need of aged-care, including many expatriates lacking family and support. Since 2000 McKean has been developing multi-tiered aged-care services. In 2009 Dok Kaew Gardens was opened as a modern international retirement home, including Lotus House for assisted living, and the secure Jasmine House for mobile elderly with dementia. McKean Medical Center has rooms for nursing home care for the elderly. Renovated small cottages in Ruam Jai Village now offer lower cost housing options for needy elderly, with daily oversight from nursing staff in the nearby nursing home.
But today McKean continues to offer specialised services in treatment of leprosy complications, and rehabilitation. McKean has out-patients clinics in 4 venues where leprosy patients and receive diagnosis and treatment. And McKean has changed its name to “McKean Senior Center” on October 1st, 2017.”
