BACKGROUND :

Resilience is a property necessary for any individual or any system existing in an ever changing and increasingly challenging environment which at times can go extreme and disruptive. System resilience is the result of characteristics of individual system component, shaped through their interactive processes. From a system evolutionary point of view, interactions between system components and between one sub-system and another, enable the system to cope, adapt and transform. Development, resilience is key to sustainability and has also been linked to equity. In health system, resilience has been key to ensure continuation of services at times of crisis and its recovery and renewal after the crisis is over. But those very same components and characteristics giving rise to resilience in times of crisis can also express itself in response to more subtle, less severe or extreme disruptive forces. Therefore, resilience is not only “reactive” but can also be “proactive”. Thai health system has shown its resilience over time, and even better, regarding equity and offering financial risk protection after the introduction of UHC over the last decade. However, NCDs bring forward the new challenges to the Thai health system not only the sustainability of the UHC but also how the Thai health system could maintain and provide its better services to protect the Thais from this global threatening force. This side event will show examples reflect the resilience of Thai health system that it has been test through disruptive forces of nature and global pandemic in the past. Speakers will be Prof.Dr. Ratchata Ratchatanawin and Dr.Somsak Chunharas, former top health policy makers with senior WHO and NSHO staff. Moreover, the primary care providers with their “true story” will illustrate more clearly how they learned and develop the system to cope with NCDs challenges.