A group of Myanmar workers decided to rent a van with a driver to head back to Myanmar for the Songkran holidays. The whole van ended up fainting all at once leaving 1 child crying alone in the back. It is estimated that there were too many luggage cramped into the back causing a lack of airflow, so they slowly fell asleep all at once.
The emergency line was notified on the 3rd of this month that 10 Myanmar workers were found fainted in a van on the way to Nakhon Sawan province. The emergency line notified the Magnohrom Hospital in Chai Nat province, the nearest hospital to come and rescue the workers and to also bring a doctor and nurses to make sure that they are safe.
Inside the White Toyota van were 11 Myanmar citizens, 10 were workers and 1 was a 2-year-old child, belonging to a couple in the van. The 10 workers fainted with not even 1 was awake. The child was crying in the back of the van, probably wondering why the parents were sleeping. The driver was Prakiang 43 years old, a Thai citizen and his wife were safe with no signs of sickness. The wife was sitting in the front seat beside Prakiang and stated that she didn’t have symptoms of weakness nor was she tired.
After a while, the Myanmar workers started to gain consciousness one by one, but a woman named Cho Cho 54 years old remained unconscious. She was sent to the Chai Nat Narae Natorn Hospital right away.
The van used CNG gas but it was not leaking and the driver along with his wife sitting in the front had no symptoms of sickness like the people who were seated in the back of the van.
Prakiang reported that he was driving from Surat Thani province and was on his way to Tak province. They started driving at 7 pm on the 2nd of this month to take the Myanmar workers on their way back to Myanmar for the Songkran holidays.
Prakiang insists that his van is in perfect condition, he thinks that it might be a sign of car sick because many of them were throwing up in the back of the van. It could also be something they ate as they had parked in 4 gas stations along the way. They were planning to have another meal in Nakhon Sawan but all in the back of the van fainted in Chai Nat.
Jaruni 38 years old the wife of Prakiang stated that when they arrived in Chai Nat she heard one passenger breath loudly, so she looked in the back and saw that none of the passengers were awake. She told Prakiang to park beside the road. When she and her husband called their names no one woke up, so they tried shaking each person but all they could do was open their eyes, none of them could speak or move.
Jaruni decided to call the emergency line at 1669 right away. It is currently estimated that the passengers brought so much luggage into the van and stacked it up to the ceiling behind the driver’s seat. The luggage plugged up the air conditioning outlet located behind the seat of the driver causing a lack of airflow. The air conditioning system could have also run into a problem after having no outlet for the cool air to flow out.
