Health is the best gift you can give to yourself. And Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital (SiPH) is more than happy to give the gift of health to help you live well for longer.  

SiPH has joined up with Kai Hua Ror (Laughter for Sale), the creation of Banlue Publications and Thailand’s longest-running comic magazine, to launch the special edition of the e-book Sukkaphap Kamlung Dee (literally Ripe Health) to bring health, laughter, and happiness to Thai people.

Through the use of cartoons and humor, this comic-style book shows you how bad daily habits can damage your health and how you can change them. It also features some of the health myths you might hear and the truths behind them. Interestingly, this handy book will tell you whether is it love at first sight or an arrhythmia – an irregular heartbeat when your heart is really beating faster than normal like it’s skipped a beat. Find out the answer by yourself. I would hate to burst your bubble!

The book is now available for free download.

A decade of operations

2022 marks a very special year for SiPH as it’s celebrating its 10^th anniversary of providing high-quality healthcare services and health education to patients and the public in order to help them protect, maintain and improve their health and well-being.

“To underline our commitment to health education, we’ve decided to work with Kai Hua Ror to create the Sukkaphap Kamlung Dee. This book is the gift we want to give to people to mark this special occasion,” Pantira Ratanapintha, the SiPH’s marketing director, tells Thai PBS World.

Over the years, the hospital has provided different forms of educational materials including booklets and handouts. To take advantage of technological advancement in the digital age and make its educational services more accessible, the SiPH has recently turned to digital books.

“Our project has received a positive response. We’ve seen patients and people making visits to the hospital picking up the materials to read. With the e-book, we’re able to reach a wider audience including caregivers, members of the public and students living in the provinces. The digital book can be accessed online anywhere anytime or you can download it and store it for later use. You can read it at home or while traveling. It’s very convenient for readers,” she adds.

“We’ve designed it so that it is educational and easy to digest by different groups of readers, while also entertaining them and making reading fun.”

“The comic book format fits the bill perfectly. Most adult and young readers are familiar with Kai Hua Ror’s cartoon characters. We hope that readers find Sukkaphap Kamlung Dee useful and hilarious. With its essential health information, the book is a good reference for anyone wanting a healthy lifestyle and a happy life and also for taking care of their loved ones,” the hospital’s marketing team continues.

Educational, hilarious and entertaining

The comic-style book opens with a quote about happiness; “We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh,” by William James, an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist. It ends with the Dalai Lama’s quote: “Happiness is the highest form of health”.

Kai Hua Ror’s famous cartoon characters including Noo-Hin, Uncle Chalong and his wife, Aunty Taew join forces to deliver a healthy dose of hilarity and happiness in this 98-page volume.  Combined with witty jokes made by a doctor and a patient with quirky behavior, it’s guaranteed to make you laugh out loud.

Understanding a medical condition is not easy. This book has done a great job of making the material easy to understand by sticking to plain language and using cartoon characters to illustrate habits in everyday life that could lead to health problems. Many similar health education books and magazines come with the information presented in a textbook format, leaving readers with a sense of information overload.

Sukkaphap Kamlung Dee offers a striking blend of text and visual content that can facilitate the communication of health information, particularly on some of the difficult and complex topics like diabetes and gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Words and images complement each other. Sequencing content on, for instance, what causes a kidney stone, its symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options helps improve the readers’ understanding.  A short dialogue in speech bubbles highlights the key messages of medical conditions to help clarify the information. Drawings and funny jokes make it engaging and entertaining.

The book is organized in a clear manner, with chapters and titles, making it easy to follow. It has six chapters covering a range of popular health problems, mostly related to lifestyle. The chapter on “Eating”, for instance, describes how bad eating habits affect your health, while the one “Beauty” will let you discover the harm that high heels can do.

There is also a great section on the importance of medical adherence – taking medications as directed by a doctor or a pharmacist.

What’s more, some of the popular health misconceptions are debunked, thus making you more confident about making healthy lifestyle choices. They include: eating sugar causes diabetes and sweating a lot means that you’re burning fat and this is making you lose weight.

Sukkaphap Kamlung Dee is a very special book and informative with the intent to educate and inspire readers to live a healthier lifestyle while also entertaining them with hilarious jokes. It is perfect for anyone looking for an easy health education book and for those who are unfamiliar with health information but would like to know more. The book is in Thai.

The book can be accessed and downloaded from the link: www.siphhospital.com/landing/e-book