Combat Health Disparities for Kachin Women (2)

Dear Donors, 

As we begin the 2015, I would like to thank you for your generous support since this project started. We have had many successes, from completing the construction and stocking of a diagnostic laboratory to enhancing Dartmouth students’ understanding about the conflict between the Burmese Army and Kachin State. 

This year, GlobeMed will continue to fund KWAT’s health programs. One major health issue in Kachin State that has been in the news lately is drug addiction, particularly concerning opium and heroin. A senior member of KWAT explained the situation to me as follows: Kachin State is rich in jade. There is a trend in young men dropping out of school because they think they can strike it rich in the mines. Instead, they end up experimenting with opium, which is readily available in mining communities. Eventually, smoking all the opium they can buy with their earnings from the mines does not provide enough of a high, and they switch to smoking, then injecting, heroin. Among other health problems, this leads to high rates of HIV/AIDS in mining areas. Since all their income goes to buying drugs, they are stuck in this cycle.

KWAT combats drug addiction through several of its programs (many of which you have helped us fund). Health education in both schools and IDP camps warns adolescents about the dangers of drug use. Capacity building programs give people alternatives to mining and allow them to make a living elsewhere. The health outreach mobile clinics and the permanent health center at Ma Jai Yang provide diagnosis and treatment for HIV/AIDS and offer medical care to drug users. The documentation and research program publishes information on drugs and related issues so that people worldwide are made aware of this problem. For their latest report, please see http://www.kachinwomen.com/images/7Oct14Report/silent_offensive_drug_report_english.pdf.

With your help, KWAT is able to do a great deal to offset the damage being done to Kachin communities by the civil war in Burma. Thank you again for your continued support, and I look forward to seeing what we can do together this year!

With gratitude,

Lisa Carson

Dear Donors,

I hope this email finds you all well. I have a few pieces of exciting news to share with you this month. First of all, today (October 15) is a bonus day on Global Giving. This means that any donation you make today will be matched at 30% until funds run out. So if you were considering donating again, now is the time to do it!

Here at Dartmouth, GlobeMed is kicking off the year with some crepe sales in the library and our annual Halloween cupcake fundraiser. We have welcomed many new and enthusiastic members from the Class of 2018, and with their help we plan to make this our biggest year yet in terms of both fundraising and raising campus awareness of the situation in Burma. 

With the new school year comes a new fundraising agreement with KWAT. This year we will be working with them on three separate projects. The first is Community Outreach—we intend to fund twelve trips by KWAT’s mobile health clinic to IDP camps and villages that have no other access to healthcare and are reliant on the limited services KWAT is able to provide. The second will be their Adolescent Reproductive Health Education program, which reaches out to youths living in IDP camps to educate them about topics like STIs and contraception. We would like to fund at least four of these programs, which will reach approximately 100 students each. Finally, we plan to create an emergency fund for pregnant women under the care of KWAT’s health program who experience delivery complications and must be referred to a hospital in either China or Burma. 

Although KWAT’s mobile clinics and permanent facility in Mai Ja Yang deliver healthy babies very regularly, they do not have the capacity to deal with most complications during childbirth. Even something as common as a caesarean section generally requires a referral to a larger hospital.

In one example taken from KWAT’s 2013 Health Program report, health staff determined that one patient would need a C-section due to complications with delivery. However, as an IDP she had no income or savings at all, and therefore refused to be transferred to a hospital with the capacity to care for her. After a certain point, it was clear to KWAT staff that the delivery was beyond the scope of their abilities with the limited facilities and equipment available to them and they were forced to transfer the woman to a large hospital, accepting responsibility for any fees. Although this action saved the life of the mother, the infant did not survive. 

This is not to say that KWAT’s delivery nurses are not immensely successful in a situation where improvisation and optimism in the face of tragedy are the only available assets. Also in 2013, one mother came to the clinic very weak and lost consciousness during delivery. The baby was born lifeless, and a typical KWAT clinic has no doctors, no ventilators, and no incubators. However, nurses were able to stimulate the infant and give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a few hours later handing a living, breathing baby to his healthy mother.

KWAT’s success in healthcare delivery is incredible given the situation. However, with a reserve fund for hospital referrals, these types of dangerous situations and the scramble to come up with thousands of dollars worth of medical fees would be avoidable. At KWAT and GlobeMed, we believe that every woman has the right to the safest and most comfortable delivery of her baby possible. We thank you for your continual support in making this a reality.

With much gratitude,

Lisa Carson