Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been cooperating with the Government of Thailand to deal with population ageing in Thailand for more than a decade. It introduced experiences and practices of Japan through the implementation of “Project on the Development of a Community-based Integrated Health Care and Social Welfare Service Model for Older Persons (CTOP)” (8 November 2007-7 November 2011), and “Project on Long-term Care Service Development for the Frail Elderly and Other Vulnerable People (LTOP)” (14 January 2013-31 August 2017). Cooperation with JICA is continued as “Project on Seamless Health and Social Services Provision for Elderly Persons (S-TOP)” (8 November 2017-31 October 2022) to find a model for the continuum of care from acute phase in hospitals to maintenance phase in the community. Other Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) schemes; Public Private Partnerships (PPP) (SDGs Business Supporting Survey), JICA Partnership Program (JPP), Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Project (GGP), and Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV), were also implemented to support Thailand’s efforts to tackle population ageing.

To review such cooperation in conjunction with measures taken by the Government of Thailand on population ageing, the Consultant from Asia SEED was entrusted by JICA to conduct the “Research on the International Cooperation Projects for Response to Population Ageing in Thailand”, from 26 November 2020 to 30 July 2021. In this Research, the Consultant illustrated Thailand’s prominent features, especially on its centralized and public dominant health system, the existing computerized civil registration system, path dependence on the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS) and its management system, and the utilization of informal human resources or volunteers in under-resourced environment. The Consultant further provided information on Japan’s cooperation in dealing with ageing issues along with the policies and measures of the Government of Thailand, described the impacts of CTOP and LTOP, together with details of the immediate and well-planned actions by the government of Thailand that contributed to the realization of high impacts. Thailand’s practices of community-based long term care development as a model for JICA’s cooperation on population ageing in other developing countries were then analyzed, and implications and lessons learned were also laid out.