Brief:
– Queen Savang Vadhana Memorial Hospital launched the “Healthy Elderly, Happy Life” project for fiscal year 2027.
– Dr. Kunakorn Sinthanaphong, acting head of social medicine, opened the event at the hospital’s 100-year memorial building.
– The program is set at 150 hospital patients aged 60 and over.
– Organizers cited Thailand’s shift into a fully aged society and a forecast that people 60 and older will reach 31.37 percent of the population in about 16 years.
– The goal is to cut long-term dependency through physical, mental, social and cognitive support, and through family and community networks.
In Full:
Queen Savang Vadhana Memorial Hospital in Sri Racha has opened a fiscal year 2027 project set at keeping older patients healthier and less dependent on long-term care.
Dr. Kunakorn Sinthanaphong, acting head of the hospital’s Social Medicine Department, presided over the opening of the “Healthy Elderly, Happy Life” project in the Leelawadee 1 meeting room of the 100-year memorial building. The hospital is a Thai Red Cross facility on Jermjompol Road in Sri Racha, Chonburi. It opened in 1902 and is also known in English as Queen Savang Vadhana Memorial Hospital.
The Health Promotion unit of the Social Medicine Department said the project responds to Thailand’s rapid move into a fully aged society. Organizers said people aged 60 and over are forecast to reach 31.37 percent of the population within about 16 years. That shift, they said, will add pressure to public-health budgets and increase chronic illness, physical decline and neurological deterioration.
The project is meant to raise overall well-being across physical, mental, social and cognitive health, improve health literacy so fewer older people become long-term dependents, and extend cooperation among families, communities, village health volunteers and partner networks. The target group is 150 hospital patients aged 60 and over.
The 31.37 percent figure matches widely cited national projections for around 2040. Official and academic estimates already put Thailand in a complete aged society, with people 60 and over at roughly 20 percent of the population, or about 13 million people. A super-aged stage, commonly defined as about 28 percent aged 60 and over, is expected in the mid-2030s. Births have also fallen below deaths in recent years, which tightens the ratio of working-age people supporting older relatives.
Local governments in Chonburi have been running similar programs. Sri Racha Municipality held a health-promotion festival for older residents in 2025 and, in March 2026, opened an “Aging Well, Strong Teeth” project for 100 members of its senior club.
Pattaya City organized age-specific screening in May 2026 for diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, stroke and heart disease.
In June 2026, Takhian Tia Municipality opened a training and study-visit project covering physical, mental, emotional and social health.
The same hospital has also taken screening outside its wards. In September 2026 its Social Medicine Department ran on-site checkups for monks at temples in Sri Racha under the “Thai Monks Far from Disease” project.
National policy sits in the same frame. Thailand’s older-persons plan and related social-protection programs treat prevention, caregiver support and reduced dependency as ways to limit the cost of an aging population. The state old-age allowance and other welfare schemes cover a wide share of seniors, but health officials have repeatedly argued that late treatment of chronic disease is more expensive than community-level prevention.
The Si Racha project is a local version of that approach, limited for now to 150 of the hospital’s own older patients.