Some children are too ill to be treated at the Mae Tao Clinic. Every Thursday, with the willing co-opereation of the Thai authorities, a van leaves Mae Tao Clinic with a complement of children needing treatment and their carers and heads for Chiang Mai, 300 miles away. Once in Chiang Mai, the child patients are admitted to Chiang Mai hospital with costs paid by BCMF. Their carers stay in a ‘safe house', essentially a hostel from which they can go to visit and support their child. The van returns with children whose treatment has ended and their carers, again each return being carefully documented. The high level of trust between the police, the army and BCMF is based on scrupulous record keeping, total transparency and the considerable charms of Kanchana Thornton, an Australian nurse who has worked in Mae Sot since 2001.

Thanks to support from Children of Conflict/Leyland SDM, Thai Children's Trust has been able to help with a number of urgent cases during the year.  The little boy in the illustration was very severely burned in a house fire, but is now doing well.  Less happily, a child suffering from leukaemia relapsed after treatment.  Nothing further can be done.

Specifically BCMF needs money to cover the cost of individual cases referred to Chiang Mai, to cover the costs of the safe house, to pay for the weekly return trip by the van and to meet the cost of occasional emergencies involving urgent transfer to Chiang Mai by private ambulance.