The women's support centre has collected information from 82 hospitals between January 1 and November 17, during which 13,550 female victims of violence sought medical attention.

"This means the number of actual victims will be much higher," Social Development and Human Security Minister Paiboon Wat-tanasiritham said yesterday.

He said this figure excluded emotionally-injured females - who often suffered verbal violence.

According to Paiboon, the Bangkok Metropolitan Adminis-tration (BMA) along with the Royal Thai Police and several women's rights agencies had gathered information on abused females from January 1 to November 16.

The information showed there were a further 2,929 female victims during the period. Up to 1,499 victims were physically assaulted, while 796 others were raped. Of the rape victims, 412 were younger than 15 years old. At the same time, 411 victims were sexually harassed and 132 female minors were taken away from their families against their will.

Relevant agencies said most abusers were the victims' friends, parents and relatives.

The domestic-violence-management unit at the Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital conducted a survey among 600 families in Bangkok and found that 29 per cent of them lived with domestic violence.

"If we make an estimation based on this figure, it means domestic violence exists in more than 18 million families in the country," Paiboon said adding that the consequences of domestic violence, direct and indirect, was estimated to cost Bt36.6 billion a year.

November has been designated as the month to campaign for an end to violence against women and girls.

As a measure to prevent the violence, Paiboon said his ministry was going to put the Domestic-Violence Victim Protection Bill before the Cabinet within two weeks.

"This bill does not focus on punishment - but rather the rehabilitation of the abusers. This bill will try to keep families from falling apart by offering opportunities to the abusers if they agree to change for the better. But if they don't change, they risk being punished," he explained.