Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
- Ethics
- research
- developing countries
- Thailand
- Burma
- genetics
- genetics research ethics
- ethics theory
- clinical ethics
The border between Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) is at the forefront of the global battle against malaria, and is an important site for research. The primary reason for this is the fact that it is on the front line in the battle against the development and spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs. That is, it is one of the primary sites of the arms race between the development of new drugs for the treatment of malaria and the evolution of antimalarial resistance in parasites.1 The antimalarial resistance developing here is likely to spread elsewhere. So, much is at stake. Globally, up to a million children each year die from malaria and more than half a billion people are affected.
Notwithstanding its global importance, this is a context in which the carrying out of research presents a complex cluster of practical ethical difficulties. One reason for this is that the people who live near the border are mostly migrants or refugees from elsewhere in Burma who have moved to the border area to escape conflict and persecution.2 There are currently thought to be two million Burmese migrants living in Thailand (about 150 000 in refugee camps) and a further million ‘internally displaced’ inside Burma. The people living in the border …
Linked Articles
Other content recommended for you
- Access to community-based reproductive health services and incidence of low birthweight delivery among refugee and displaced mothers: a retrospective study in the Thailand-Myanmar border region
- Migrant perinatal depression study: a prospective cohort study of perinatal depression on the Thai-Myanmar border
- Drug resistance in malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV in South East Asia: biology, programme, and policy considerations
- Frank Green
- Group Pregnancy Care for refugee background women: a codesigned, multimethod evaluation protocol applying a community engagement framework and an interrupted time series design
- A Rohingya refugee’s journey in Australia and the barriers to accessing healthcare
- Short maternal stature and gestational weight gain among refugee and migrant women birthing appropriate for gestational age term newborns: a retrospective cohort on the Myanmar-Thailand border, 2004–2016
- Key takeaways from China’s success in eliminating malaria: leveraging existing evidence for a malaria-free world
- Respectful community engagement in health research with diverse im/migrant communities
- Healthcare for migrant workers in destination countries: a comparative qualitative study of China and Malaysia