In one part of Thailand, there’s a thriving, bustling Bangkok hospital. They’re so well-resourced that they can afford to update their equipment when needed, to ensure the best for their patients.

In another part of Thailand, hundreds of kilometres away, stands a little mountain village hospital so basic that the floors are bare concrete and they don’t have reliable electricity to power what should be life-saving equipment. It’s a common story in most nations: resources are concentrated in big cities and rural areas miss out.

But life in this mountain community is especially precarious. Their small tourism industry was wiped out by Covid, and now they’re seeing violent attacks as part of ethnic tensions in the area. Fishermen are scared to fish at night because of the unpredictable attacks, affecting their livelihoods, and cross-border trade has suffered too.

In 2022, the big Bangkok hospital offered 17 electric beds through our Global Hand service. We knew it was a valuable donation. So we were especially glad when a long-term partner working with refugees along the Thai-Burma border said they would be thrilled to take them. “We have really needed this for a long time, but we alone couldn’t buy them,” they wrote. “We truly appreciate it!” They made plans to get the beds to the mountain village hospital in their network, described above.

“We really want all 17 beds, but I don’t have enough money for transportation.”

Despite donor and recipient being located in the same nation, the chasm between these two worlds was still huge. Transporting the beds from Bangkok to the mountain village would cost a great deal of money. “We really want all 17 beds,” wrote our partner, “but I don’t have enough money for transportation. I’m trying to raise funds for this, but I don’t know how much I will get.” Even once they arrived in the mountains, the beds would have to navigate flood-damaged bridges and cut-off roads to reach the hospital.

Incredibly, the Bangkok hospital agreed to cover the shortfall of the transportation fees on top of the valuable beds donation, and once flood waters had receded, the beds could be safely installed at the little hospital.

Photos show them already in use by patients from the community and it’s wonderful to see patients brought a little closer to the same level of comfort as those who first used the beds at the luxury hospital in the capital.