Monk’s health in urban area: The Problem that should be considered

Abstract

The Buddhist monk as one of Triple Gem (Rattana Tri) elements plays an important role in the inheritance and propagation of Buddhism in sustainable and wide manner. Thus, the health care of monks is one of ways to maintain Buddhism. Throughout the time, health problems of monks in Thailand has been discovered. Particularly, monks in urban areas have same lifestyle to urban people that need for fast and convenient lifestyle. In addition, making food offerings from the people may not be appropriate and sufficient for monks’ health. These problems result from public lack of knowledge or misunderstandings. For these reasons, increasing number of monks tend to develop non-communicable diseases each year. More importantly, possible causes are malnutrition and poor food consumption behavior, insufficient physical activity because of certain disciplinary restrictions, insufficient rest and sleep, incomprehensive accessibility to health service, and social environment of urbanity. These factors influence health of urban monks. However, some agencies in both public and private sectors as well as various organizations have implemented the health promotion for monks as a group of population with the difficulties in accessing to the healthcare and the actions to provide correct knowledge and understandings about health of monks in all sectors for better health among monks in urban area. Therefore, all sectors in Thai society should participate, emphasize and take actions to promote health of monks appropriately as one of ways to sustainably inherit Buddhism.