Health system so poor despite series of reforms in Myanmar

Photo from Getty Images

Healthcare facilities in Myanmar is so poor, treatment for the HIV disease is so scarce, lack of funds and medicines, the usual comments of doctors would be to advice their HIV patients to be treated if they’re seriously infected with the disease.

A patient infected with HIV is troubled with her condition after tested positive with the virus by the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

With the help of nongovernmental organizations they were able to come up with limited funds but not sufficient enough to cover demands from increasing number of patients, according to news reported from AFP.

According to Soe Yadanar, one of the four doctors in a poor clinic in Yangon he said that since the scarcity of medicine cannot treat the 2,000 patients infected with HIV it is very hard for them to tell the real situation. Only 1/3 of the 120,000 infected with HIV who gets the anti retrovirals are being treated under World Health Organization.

Other relatively concern illnesses that needs proper treatment is tuberculosis and malaria which is also lacking in medicine supplies. Patients are treating their conditions very seriously but they are helpless. There are a lot of doctors who could provide well close supervision to patients but the problem really relies on the scarcity of prescribed treatments and medicines, lack of registered nurses, and lack of hospital facilities and equipments, said MSF head of mission Peter Paul de Groote, the report said.

Since the budget costs for health related concerns are too small the government of President Thein Sein has marked a quadrupled funding of health services for the year 2012 -2013.

Though it’s a good starting point, it needs more investment coming from the government itself and other concerned donors particularly the help of foreign communities. For people infected with such ailments together with their families also urged the government to focus the hardships and sentiments these people are going thru.

People being treated also needed a close monitoring on how their treatment will be undertaken so that all medicines will be appropriately and properly taken, said news report from AFP.